Python Read Text File and Keep Quotes

Summary: in this tutorial, you learn various ways to read text files in Python.

TL;DR

The following shows how to read all texts from the readme.txt file into a cord:

            
                              with                open('readme.txt')                as                f:     lines = f.readlines()            
                          Code language:              JavaScript              (              javascript              )                      

Steps for reading a text file in Python

To read a text file in Python, you follow these steps:

• Beginning, open a text file for reading by using the open() function.
• 2d, read text from the text file using the file read(), readline(), or readlines() method of the file object.
• Third, close the file using the file close() method.

1) open() function

The open() function has many parameters but you'll be focusing on the beginning two.

            
              open(path_to_file, way)            
          

The path_to_file parameter specifies the path to the text file.

If the file is in the same folder as the program, you just need to specify the proper name of the file. Otherwise, yous need to specify the path to the file.

To specify the path to the file, y'all use the forward-slash ('/') even if you're working in Windows.

For example, if the file is readme.txt stored in the sample binder as the program, you need to specify the path to the file as c:/sample/readme.txt

The mode is an optional parameter. It's a string that specifies the mode in which you want to open up the file.

The post-obit table shows available modes for opening a text file:

Mode	Description
'r'	Open for text file for reading text
'w'	Open a text file for writing text
'a'	Open up a text file for appending text

For example, to open up a file whose name is the-zen-of-python.txt stored in the same folder as the programme, you use the following lawmaking:

            
                              f = open up('the-zen-of-python.txt','r')            
                          Code language:              JavaScript              (              javascript              )                      

The open up() part returns a file object which you will use to read text from a text file.

two) Reading text methods

The file object provides y'all with three methods for reading text from a text file:

• read() – read all text from a file into a string. This method is useful if you have a small file and you desire to manipulate the whole text of that file.
• readline() – read the text file line by line and return all the lines every bit strings.
• readlines() – read all the lines of the text file and render them as a list of strings.

three) close() method

The file that you open volition remain open until you shut it using the close() method.

It's important to close the file that is no longer in apply. If you lot don't close the file, the program may crash or the file would be corrupted.

The following shows how to call the close() method to shut the file:

            
                              f                .close()            
                          Lawmaking language:              CSS              (              css              )                      

To close the file automatically without calling the close() method, y'all use the with statement like this:

            
                              with                open(path_to_file)                as                f:     contents = f.readlines()            
                          Lawmaking language:              JavaScript              (              javascript              )                      

In practice, you'll use the with statement to shut the file automatically.

Reading a text file examples

We'll use the-zen-of-python.txt file for the sit-in.

The post-obit instance illustrates how to apply the read() method to read all the contents of the the-zen-of-python.txt file into a string:

            
                              with                open('the-zen-of-python.txt')                as                f:     contents = f.read()     print(contents)            
                          Lawmaking linguistic communication:              JavaScript              (              javascript              )                      

Output:

            
              Beautiful is better than ugly. Explicit is ameliorate than implicit. Simple is better than complex. ...                          
          

The following example uses the readlines() method to read the text file and returns the file contents as a list of strings:

            
              lines = []                with                open('the-zen-of-python.txt')                as                f:     lines = f.readlines()  count =                0                for                line                in                lines:     count +=                ane                print(f'line {count}: {line}')                          
                          Code language:              JavaScript              (              javascript              )                      

Output:

            
              line 1: Beautiful is better than ugly.  line 2: Explicit is better than implicit.  line three: Simple is better than complex. ...                          
          

The following example shows how to use the readline() to read the text file line by line:

            
                              with                open('the-zen-of-python.txt')                as                f:     line = f.readline()                while                line:         line = f.readline()         print(line)            
                          Lawmaking language:              JavaScript              (              javascript              )                      

Output:

            
              Explicit is better than implicit.  Simple is ameliorate than complex.  Complex is meliorate than complicated. ...                          
          

A more curtailed way to read a text file line by line

The open() function returns a file object which is an iterable object. Therefore, you lot tin can utilize a for loop to iterate over the lines of a text file as follows:

            
                              with                open('the-zen-of-python.txt')                as                f:                for                line                in                f:         print(line)            
                          Lawmaking linguistic communication:              JavaScript              (              javascript              )                      

This is more concise way to read a text file line by line.

Read UTF-viii text files

The code in the previous examples works fine with ASCII text files. However, if yous're dealing with other languages such as Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, the text file is not a simple ASCII text file. And it's likely a UTF-viii file that uses more than than just the standard ASCII text characters.

To open a UTF-8 text file, you need to pass the encoding='utf-8' to the open up() function to instruct it to expect UTF-eight characters from the file.

For the demonstration, yous'll utilise the following quotes.txt file that contains some quotes in Japanese.

The following shows how to loop through the quotes.txt file:

            
                              with                open('quotes.txt', encoding='utf8')                as                f:                for                line                in                f:         print(line.strip())                          
                          Lawmaking language:              JavaScript              (              javascript              )                      

Output:

Summary

• Use the open up() function with the 'r' mode to open up a text file for reading.
• Use the read(), readline(), or readlines() method to read a text file.
• Always close a file subsequently completing reading it using the close() method or the with statement.
• Use the encoding='utf-viii' to read the UTF-8 text file.

Did you lot find this tutorial helpful ?

Python Read Text File and Keep Quotes

Source: https://www.pythontutorial.net/python-basics/python-read-text-file/

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