10.8. Writing Text Files¶
One of the most commonly performed data processing tasks is to read data from a file,
manipulate it in some way, and then write the resulting data out to a new data file to be used
for other purposes later. To accomplish this, the open function discussed above can also be
used to create a new file prepared for writing. Note in Table 1
that the only difference between opening a file for writing and opening a file for reading is
the use of the 'w' flag instead of the 'r' flag as the second parameter. When we open
a file for writing, a new, empty file with that name is created and made ready to accept our
data. If an existing file has the same name, its contents are overwritten. As before, the function returns a reference to the new file object.
Table 2 shows one additional method on file objects that we have not used
thus far. The write method allows us to add data to a text file. Recall that text files
contain sequences of characters. We usually think of these character sequences as being the
lines of the file where each line ends with the newline \n character. Be very careful to
notice that the write method takes one parameter, a string. When invoked, the characters of
the string will be added to the end of the file. This means that it is the programmer’s job to
include the newline characters as part of the string if desired.
Assume that we have been asked to provide a file consisting of all the squared numbers from 1 to 12.
First, we will need to open the file. Afterwards, we will iterate through the numbers 1 through 12, and square each one of them. This new number will need to be converted to a string, and then it can be written into the file.
The program below solves part of the problem. We first want to make sure that we’ve written the correct code to calculate the square of each number.
When we run this program, we see the lines of output on the screen. Once we are satisfied that
it is creating the appropriate output, the next step is to add the necessary pieces to produce
an output file and write the data lines to it. To start, we need to open a new output file by
calling the open function, outfile = open("squared_numbers.txt",'w'), using the 'w'
flag. We can choose any file name we like. If the file does not exist, it will be created.
However, if the file does exist, it will be reinitialized as empty and you will lose any
previous contents.
Once the file has been created, we just need to call the write method passing the string
that we wish to add to the file. In this case, the string is already being printed so we will
just change the print into a call to the write method. However, there is an additional
step to take, since the write method can only accept a string as input. We’ll need to convert
the number to a string. Then, we just need to add one extra character to the string. The
newline character needs to be concatenated to the end of the line. The entire line now becomes
outfile.write(str(square)+ '\n'). The print statement automatically outputs a newline
character after whatever text it outputs, but the write method does not do that automatically.
We also need to close the file when we are done.
The complete program is shown below.
Note
As with file reading, for security reasons the runestone interactive textbook environment does not write files to the file system on your local computer. In an activecode window, we simulate writing to a file. The contents of the written file are shown and you can do a subsequent read of the contents of that filename. If you try to overwrite a file that’s built in to the page, it may not let you; don’t try to get too fancy with our file system simulator!
Below, we have printed the first 10 characters to the output window.