How to close pyPDF "PdfFileReader" Class file handle

romor picture romor · Dec 12, 2010 · Viewed 11.9k times · Source

this should be very simple question, for which I couldn't find answer by Google search: How to close file handle opened by pyPDF "PdfFileReader" Class

Here is snippet:

import os.path
from pyPdf import PdfFileReader

fname = 'my.pdf'
input = PdfFileReader(file(fname, "rb"))

os.rename(fname, 'my_renamed.pdf')

which raises error [32]

Thanks

Answer

fitzgeraldsteele picture fitzgeraldsteele · Feb 20, 2012

The operating system is preventing a file from being re-named while something else has it open. This is a Good Thing (tm).

Python's with statement will automatically close the file after you're done reading/manipulating it.

with open(fname, "rb") as f:
  input = PdfFileReader(f, "rb"))

os.rename(fname, 'my_renamed.pdf')

If you're still on Python 2.5, you'll have to do a special import:

from __future__ import with_statement

Python 2.6 and above have with enabled by default.