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This creates a file in the current directory, and writes text to it (the filename can be afull directory path if you need to access a file elsewhere on your computer). To readback what you just wrote, reopen the file in 'r' processing mode, for reading input(this is the default if you omit the mode in the call). Then read the file’s content intoa string of bytes, and display it. A file’s contents are always a string of bytes to yourscript, regardless of the type of data the file contains:>>> f = open('data.txt') # 'r' is the default processing mode>>> bytes = f.read( ) # Read entire file into a string>>> bytes'Hello\nworld\n'>>> print bytes # Print interprets control charactersHelloworld>>> bytes.split( ) # File content is always a string['Hello', 'world']Other file object methods support additional features we don’t have time to coverhere. For instance, file objects provide more ways of reading and writing (readaccepts an optional byte size, readline reads one line at a time, and so on), as well asother tools (seek moves to a new file position). We’ll meet the full set of file methodslater in this book, but if you want a quick preview now, run a dir call on theword file (the name of the file data type), and a help on any of the names that comeback:>>> dir(file)['_ _class_ _', '_ _delattr_ _', '_ _doc_ _', '_ _enter_ _', '_ _exit_ _','_ _getattribute_ _', '_ _hash_ _', '_ _init_ _', '_ _iter_ _', '_ _new_ _','_ _reduce_ _', '_ _reduce_ex_ _', '_ _repr_ _', '_ _setattr_ _', '_ _str_ _','close', 'closed', 'encoding', 'fileno', 'flush', 'isatty', 'mode','name', 'newlines', 'next', 'read', 'readinto', 'readline', 'readlines','seek', 'softspace', 'tell', 'truncate', 'write', 'writelines', 'xreadlines']>>> help(file.seek)...try it and see...Other File-Like ToolsThe open function is the workhorse for most file processing you will do in <strong>Python</strong>.For more advanced tasks, though, <strong>Python</strong> comes with additional file-like tools:pipes, fifos, sockets, keyed-access files, object persistence, descriptor-based files,relational and object-oriented database interfaces, and more. Descriptor files, forinstance, support file locking and other low-level tools, and sockets provide an interfacefor networking and interprocess communication. We won’t cover many of thesetopics in this book, but you’ll find them useful once you start programming <strong>Python</strong>in earnest.86 | Chapter 4: Introducing <strong>Python</strong> Object Types

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