How do I open a text file in Python?

python python-3.x filehandler
Alex Osborne picture Alex Osborne · Oct 18, 2016 · Viewed 23.9k times · Source

Currently I am trying to open a text file called "temperature.txt" i have saved on my desktop using file handler, however for some reason i cannot get it to work. Could anyone tell me what im doing wrong.

#!/Python34/python
from math import *

fh = open('temperature.txt')

num_list = []

for num in  fh:
    num_list.append(int(num))

fh.close()

Answer

Tony Suffolk 66 picture Tony Suffolk 66 · Oct 18, 2016

The pythonic way to do this is 

#!/Python34/python

num_list = []

with open('temperature.text', 'r') as fh:
    for line in fh:
        num_list.append(int(line))

You don't need to use close here because the 'with' statement handles that automatically.

If you are comfortable with List comprehensions - this is another method : 

#!/Python34/python

with open('temperature.text', 'r') as fh:
    num_list = [int(line) for line in fh]

In both cases 'temperature.text' must be in your current directory.

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