.. Objectives

.. ----------

.. By the end of this tutorial, you will be able to 

.. 1. Open and read the contents of a file. 

.. #. Read files line by line. 

.. #. Read all the contents of the file at once. 

.. #. Close open files. 

.. Prerequisites

.. -------------

.. 1. getting started with ipython

.. #. getting started with lists

.. #. getting started with for

.. Author              : Puneeth

   External Reviewer   :

   Checklist OK?       : <put date stamp here, if OK> [2010-10-05]

Script

------

{{{ Show the slide containing title }}}

Hello Friends. Welcome to the tutorial on getting started with files. 

{{{ Show the outline for this tutorial }}} 

In this tutorial we shall learn to read files, and do some basic

actions on the file, like opening and reading a file, closing a

file, iterating through the file line-by-line, and appending the

lines of a file to a list. 

{{{ switch back to the terminal }}}

As usual, we start IPython, using 

::

  ipython -pylab 

Let us first open the file, ``pendulum.txt`` present in

``/home/fossee/``. 

::

  f = open('/home/fossee/pendulum.txt')

``f`` is called a file object. Let us type ``f`` on the terminal to

see what it is. 

::

  f

The file object shows, the file which is open and the mode (read

or write) in which it is open. Notice that it is open in read only

mode, here. 

We shall first learn to read the whole file into a single

variable. Later, we shall look at reading it line-by-line. We use

the ``read`` method of ``f`` to read, all the contents of the file

into the variable ``pend``. 

::

  pend = f.read()

Now, let us see what is in ``pend``, by typing 

::

  print pend

We can see that ``pend`` has all the data of file. Type just ``pend``

to see more explicitly, what it contains. 

::

  pend

Following is an exercise that you must do. 

%%1%% Split the variable into a list, ``pend_list``, of the lines in

the file. Hint, use the tab command to see what methods the string

variable has.

Please, pause the video here. Do the exercise and then continue. 

.. #[punch: should this even be put? add dependency to strings LO,

.. where we mention that strings have methods for manipulation. hint:

.. use splitlines()]

::

  pend_list = pend.splitlines()

  pend_list

Now, let us learn to read the file line-by-line. But, before that we

will have to close the file, since the file has already been read till

the end.

.. #[punch: should we mention file-pointer?]

Let us close the file opened into f.

::

  f.close()

Let us again type ``f`` on the prompt to see what it shows. 

::

  f

Notice, that it now says the file has been closed. It is a good

programming practice to close any file objects that we have

opened, after their job is done.

Let us, now move on to reading files line-by-line. 

Following is an exercise that you must do. 

%%2%% Re-open the file ``pendulum.txt`` with ``f`` as the file object.

Please, pause the video here. Do the exercise and then continue. 

We just use the up arrow until we reach the open command and issue

it again. 

::

  f = open('/home/fossee/pendulum.txt')

Now, to read the file line-by-line, we iterate over the file

object line-by-line, using the ``for`` command. Let us iterate over

the file line-wise and print each of the lines. 

::

  for line in f:

      print line

As we already know, ``line`` is just a dummy variable, and not a

keyword. We could have used any other variable name, but ``line``

seems meaningful enough.

Instead of just printing the lines, let us append them to a list,

``line_list``. We first initialize an empty list, ``line_list``. 

::

  line_list = [ ]

Let us then read the file line-by-line and then append each of the

lines, to the list. We could, as usual close the file using

``f.close`` and re-open it. But, this time, let's leave alone the

file object ``f`` and directly open the file within the for

statement. This will save us the trouble of closing the file, each

time we open it. 

::

  for line in open('/home/fossee/pendulum.txt'):

      line_list.append(line)

Let us see what ``line_list`` contains. 

::

  line_list

Notice that ``line_list`` is a list of the lines in the file, along

with the newline characters. If you noticed, ``pend_list`` did not

contain the newline characters, because the string ``pend`` was

split on the newline characters. 

{{{ show the summary slide }}}

That brings us to the end of this tutorial. In this tutorial we

have learnt to open and close files, read the data in the files as

a whole, using the read command or reading it line by line by

iterating over the file object. 

{{{ Show the "sponsored by FOSSEE" slide }}}

This tutorial was created as a part of FOSSEE project, NME ICT, MHRD India

Hope you have enjoyed and found it useful.

Thank you!