Develop Reference

writing output for python not functioning

I am attempting to output a new txt file but it come up blank. I am doing this
my_file = open("something.txt","w")
#and then
my_file.write("hello")
Right after this line it just says 5 and then no text comes up in the file
What am I doing wrong?

You must close the file before the write is flushed. If I open an interpreter and then enter:
my_file = open('something.txt', 'w')
my_file.write('hello')
and then open the file in a text program, there is no text.
If I then issue:
my_file.close()
Voila! Text!
If you just want to flush once and keep writing, you can do that too:
my_file.flush()
my_file.write('\nhello again') # file still says 'hello'
my_file.flush() # now it says 'hello again' on the next line
By the way, if you happen to read the beautiful, wonderful documentation for file.write, which is only 2 lines long, you would have your answer (emphasis mine):
Write a string to the file. There is no return value. Due to buffering, the string may not actually show up in the file until the flush() or close() method is called.

If you don't want to care about closing file, use with:
with open("something.txt","w") as f:
f.write('hello')
Then python will take care of closing the file for you automatically.

As Two-Bit Alchemist pointed out, the file has to be closed. The python file writer uses a buffer (BufferedIOBase I think), meaning it collects a certain number of bytes before writing them to disk in bulk. This is done to save overhead when a lot of write operations are performed on a single file.
Also: When working with files, try using a with-environment to make sure your file is closed after you are done writing/reading:
with open("somefile.txt", "w") as myfile:
myfile.write("42")
# when you reach this point, i.e. leave the with-environment,
# the file is closed automatically.

The python file writer uses a buffer (BufferedIOBase I think), meaning
it collects a certain number of bytes before writing them to disk in
bulk. This is done to save overhead when a lot of write operations are
performed on a single file. Ref #m00am
Your code is also okk. Just add a statement for close file, then work correctly.
my_file = open("fin.txt","w")
#and then
my_file.write("hello")
my_file.close()

Change open file access mode

Is it possible to change file access mode after the file has been opened?
f=open(my_file, 'r')
change f to be able to write to it, or to declare that the file should be opened in universal newline mode?

Since changing file descriptor's permissions is not supported by Linux nor Windows. (there is no posix function to change open mode in linux at least), it's not possible to change it's permissions once the file descriptor have been set (Some OS specific tricks exists but I wouldn't recommend it).
You will need to reopen it with other permissions.

While there doesn't seem to be any way of changing the access mode on the underlying descriptor you could do the work somewhat at the python object level if you want to restrict the access (if you want to make a readonly file writable you're out of luck). Something like this:
f=open(my_file, 'w+')
f.write = None
f.writelines = None
# etc...
If you're using python2 you would need to wrap the file object to be able to disable the writing methods.
While you could restore a such modified file object to be writable again (and thereby you could circumvent the block - which by the way is almost always the case in python), it could be made to emulate the behaviour of a read-only file (which would be good enough for many cases).

You can open file as follows to be able to read and write
f = open(my_file, 'r+')

Assuming you've closed the file, just reassign to a new file object:
f = open(my_file, 'w')

Given that you have a file object f_r that was opened only for reading, you can use os.fdopen() to get file object f_w that is associated with the same file, but has different mode:
f_r = open(filename, "r")
f_w = os.fdopen(f_read.fileno(), "a+")
f_w.write("Here I come\n")
However, this path can lead to misery and suffering when misused. Since file objects do some buffering (if not disabled), simultaneous use of both f_r and f_w can cause unexpected results. Also reopening <stdin> or <stdout> may or may not do what you need or expect.

Here's how I solved this problem. For context, in my case, the file was only stored in memory, not on the disk, so I wasn't able to just reopen it from there.
from io import StringIO
...
bytes = file.read()
string = bytes.decode("utf-8") # or whatever encoding you wanna use
file = StringIO(string)

If you do not want to reopen it, use:
f.mode = "mode-to-change-to"#w, a, r, ect.
for mode,
f.name = "file_name"
for name, and:
f.encoding = "encoding"#default is UTF-8
for encoding.
Edit
you should use:
with open("filename", "mode") as f:
#do something
f.mode = "another-mode"
#do something else
so that the file closes automaticly when you are finished

Python Subprocess for Notepad

I am trying to open Notepad using popen and write something into it. I can't get my head around it. I can open Notepad using command:
notepadprocess=subprocess.Popen('notepad.exe')
I am trying to identify how can I write anything in the text file using python. Any help is appreciated.

You can at first write something into txt file (ex. foo.txt) and then open it with notepad:
import os
f = open('foo.txt','w')
f.write('Hello world!')
f.close()
os.system("notepad.exe foo.txt")

You may be confusing the concept of (text) file with the processes that manipulate them.
Notepad is a program, of which you can create a process. A file, on the other hand, is just a structure on your hard drive.
From a programming standpoint, Notepad doesn't edit files. It:
reads a file into computer memory
modifies the content of that memory
writes that memory back into a file (which could be similarly named, or otherwise - which is known as the "Save as" operation).
Your program, just as any other program, can manipulate files, just as notepad does. In particular, you can perform exactly the same sequence as Notepad:
my_file= "myfile.txt" #the name/path of the file
with open(file, "rb") as f: #open the file for reading
content= f.read() #read the file into memory
content+= "mytext" #change the memory
with open(file, "wb") as f: #open the file for writing
f.write( content ) #write the memory into the file

Found the exact solution from Alex K's comment. I used pywinauto to perform this task.

How to confirm that a file object is empty? [Python]

in a py module, I write:
outFile = open(fileName, mode='w')
if A:
outFile.write(...)
if B:
outFile.write(...)
and in these lines, I didn't use flush or close method.
Then after these lines, I want to check whether this "outFile" object is empty or not. How can I do with it?

There are a few problems with your code.
You can't .write to a file that you opened with 'r'. You need to open(fileName, 'w').
If A or B then you've certainly written to the file, so it's not empty!
Barring those. you can get the length of a file with
os.stat(outFile.fileno())
EDIT: I'll explain what flush does. Python is often used to do quite large amounts of file reads and writes, which can be slow. It is thus tweaked to make them as fast as possible. One way that is does so is to "buffer" such writes and then do them all in one big block: when you write a small string, Python will remember it but won't actually write it to the file until it thinks it should.
This means that if you want to tell whether you have written data to the file by inspecting the file, you have to tell Python to write all the data it's remembering first, or else you might not see it. flush is the command to write all the buffered data.
Of course, if you ask Python whether it's written anything to the file, say by inspecting the position in the file (.tell()), then it will know about the buffering.

If you've already written to the file, you can use .tell() to check if the current file position is nonzero:
>>> handle = open('/tmp/file.txt', 'w')
>>> handle.write('foo')
>>> handle.tell()
3
This won't work if you .seek() back to the beginning of the file.

You can use os.stat to get file info:
import os
fileSize = os.stat(fileName).st_size

with open("filename.txt", "r+") as f:
if f.read():
# file isn't empty
f.write("something")
# uncomment this line if you want to delete everything else in the file
# f.truncate()
else:
# file is empty
f.write("somethingelse")
"r+" mode always you to read & write.
"with" will automatically close file

Python Does Not Read Entire Text File

I'm running into a problem that I haven't seen anyone on StackOverflow encounter or even google for that matter.
My main goal is to be able to replace occurences of a string in the file with another string. Is there a way there a way to be able to acess all of the lines in the file.
The problem is that when I try to read in a large text file (1-2 gb) of text, python only reads a subset of it.
For example, I'll do a really simply command such as:
newfile = open("newfile.txt","w")
f = open("filename.txt","r")
for line in f:
replaced = line.replace("string1", "string2")
newfile.write(replaced)
And it only writes the first 382 mb of the original file. Has anyone encountered this problem previously?
I tried a few different solutions such as using:
import fileinput
for i, line in enumerate(fileinput.input("filename.txt", inplace=1)
sys.stdout.write(line.replace("string1", "string2")
But it has the same effect. Nor does reading the file in chunks such as using
f.read(10000)
I've narrowed it down to mostly likely being a reading in problem and not a writing problem because it happens for simply printing out lines. I know that there are more lines. When I open it in a full text editor such as Vim, I can see what the last line should be, and it is not the last line that python prints.
Can anyone offer any advice or things to try?
I'm currently using a 32-bit version of Windows XP with 3.25 gb of ram, and running Python 2.7

Try:
f = open("filename.txt", "rb")
On Windows, rb means open file in binary mode. According to the docs, text mode vs. binary mode only has an impact on end-of-line characters. But (if I remember correctly) I believe opening files in text mode on Windows also does something with EOF (hex 1A).
You can also specify the mode when using fileinput:
fileinput.input("filename.txt", inplace=1, mode="rb")

Are you sure the problem is with reading and not with writing out?
Do you close the file that is written to, either explicitly newfile.close() or using the with construct?
Not closing the output file is often the source of such problems when buffering is going on somewhere. If that's the case in your setting too, closing should fix your initial solutions.

If you use the file like this:
with open("filename.txt") as f:
for line in f:
newfile.write(line.replace("string1", "string2"))
It should only read into memory one line at a time, unless you keep a reference to that line in memory.
After each line is read it will be up to pythons garbage collector to get rid of it. Give this a try and see if it works for you :)

Found to solution thanks to Gareth Latty. Using an iterator:
def read_in_chunks(file, chunk_size=1000):
while True:
data = file.read(chunk_size)
if not data: break
yield data
This answer was posted as an edit to the question Python Does Not Read Entire Text File by the OP user1297872 under CC BY-SA 3.0.