Read and overwrite a file in Python

python file overwrite
compie picture compie · Mar 11, 2010 · Viewed 160.7k times · Source

Currently I'm using this:

f = open(filename, 'r+')
text = f.read()
text = re.sub('foobar', 'bar', text)
f.seek(0)
f.write(text)
f.close()

But the problem is that the old file is larger than the new file. So I end up with a new file that has a part of the old file on the end of it.

Answer

nosklo picture nosklo · Mar 11, 2010

If you don't want to close and reopen the file, to avoid race conditions, you could truncate it:

f = open(filename, 'r+')
text = f.read()
text = re.sub('foobar', 'bar', text)
f.seek(0)
f.write(text)
f.truncate()
f.close()

The functionality will likely also be cleaner and safer using open as a context manager, which will close the file handler, even if an error occurs!

with open(filename, 'r+') as f:
    text = f.read()
    text = re.sub('foobar', 'bar', text)
    f.seek(0)
    f.write(text)
    f.truncate()

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