The Python Apprentice

Opening a file for writing

Let's start working with files by opening a file in write mode. We'll be explicit about using the UTF-8 encoding, because we have no way of knowing what your default encoding is. We'll also use keyword arguments to make things clearer still:

>>> f = open('wasteland.txt', mode='wt', encoding='utf-8')

The first argument is the filename. The mode argument is a string containing letters with different meanings. In this case w means write and t means text.

All mode strings should consist of one of read, write or append mode. This table lists the mode codes along with their meanings in the following format  Code:  Meaning :

 

•  r: Open file for reading. The stream is positioned at the beginning of the file. This is the ...