open()

The open() function is built into Python and can be used for opening files.

Syntax

# First syntax
f = open("file-name.format")
f.close()

# Second syntax
with open("file-name.format") as f:
  print("This syntax auto-closes the file.")

As shown above, the open() function uses two distinct syntaxes:

• The first is assigned to a variable and closed afterwards with the .close() method.
• The second uses the with keyword that includes a self-closing function body.

In both cases, file names can be specified in the open() function. An important point to note is that unless the file exists within the scope of the current directory, the entire file path must be specified.

File Modes

There are several modes Python can do when opening a file. Some commonly-used modes include the following:

• 'r': Reads from an existing file (default mode).
• 'w': Writes to a file (initially trims the whitespace).
• 'a': Appends the content of an existing file.
• 'x': Creates a new file with the provided name string.

Example

Files can be read in either a textual or binary format and denoted as t and b, respectively. The default format is text.

open("text.txt") # To open a file
open("text.txt", 'bx') # Creates a file in binary mode

Codebyte Example

In the example below, multiple calls to the open() function are made, using several modes to initially create a file with some content and then overwrite it:

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