Python in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Organization of This Chapter

First of all, this chapter, in File Objects, discusses the most typical way in which Python programs read and write data, which is via built-in file objects. Immediately after that, the chapter covers the polymorphic concept of file-like objects (objects that are not files but behave to some extent like files) in File-Like Objects and Polymorphism.

The chapter next covers modules that deal with temporary files and file-like objects (tempfile in The tempfile Module, StringIO and cStringIO in The StringIO and cStringIO Modules).

Next comes the coverage of modules that help you access the contents of text and binary files (fileinput in The fileinput Module, linecache in The linecache Module, struct in The struct Module) and support compressed files and other data archives (gzip in The gzip Module, bz2 in The bz2 Module, tarfile in The tarfile Module, zipfile in The zipfile Module, zlib in The zlib Module).

In Python, the os module supplies many of the functions that operate on the filesystem, so this chapter continues by introducing the os module in The os Module. The chapter then covers, in Filesystem Operations, operations on the filesystem (comparing, copying, and deleting directories and files, working with file paths, and accessing low-level file descriptors) offered by os (in File and Directory Functions of the os Module), os.path (in The os.path Module), and other modules (dircache in “listdir”, stat in The stat Module, filecmp in The filecmp Module ...