Create a file if it doesn't exist

python createfile
Miguel Hernandez picture Miguel Hernandez · Mar 4, 2016 · Viewed 262.9k times · Source

I'm trying to open a file, and if the file doesn't exist, I need to create it and open it for writing. I have this so far:

#open file for reading
fn = input("Enter file to open: ")
fh = open(fn,'r')
# if file does not exist, create it
if (!fh) 
fh = open ( fh, "w")

The error message says there's an issue on the line if(!fh). Can I use exist like in Perl?

Answer

Kron picture Kron · Feb 20, 2017

If you don't need atomicity you can use os module:

import os

if not os.path.exists('/tmp/test'):
    os.mknod('/tmp/test')

UPDATE:

As Cory Klein mentioned, on Mac OS for using os.mknod() you need a root permissions, so if you are Mac OS user, you may use open() instead of os.mknod()

import os

if not os.path.exists('/tmp/test'):
    with open('/tmp/test', 'w'): pass

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