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How to take a file name and have it return FASTA data structure? [duplicate]

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How do I read every line of a file in Python and store each line as an element in a list?
I want to read the file line by line and append each line to the end of the list.

This code will read the entire file into memory and remove all whitespace characters (newlines and spaces) from the end of each line:
with open(filename) as file:
lines = [line.rstrip() for line in file]
If you're working with a large file, then you should instead read and process it line-by-line:
with open(filename) as file:
for line in file:
print(line.rstrip())
In Python 3.8 and up you can use a while loop with the walrus operator like so:
with open(filename) as file:
while (line := file.readline().rstrip()):
print(line)
Depending on what you plan to do with your file and how it was encoded, you may also want to manually set the access mode and character encoding:
with open(filename, 'r', encoding='UTF-8') as file:
while (line := file.readline().rstrip()):
print(line)

See Input and Ouput:
with open('filename') as f:
lines = f.readlines()
or with stripping the newline character:
with open('filename') as f:
lines = [line.rstrip('\n') for line in f]

This is more explicit than necessary, but does what you want.
with open("file.txt") as file_in:
lines = []
for line in file_in:
lines.append(line)

This will yield an "array" of lines from the file.
lines = tuple(open(filename, 'r'))
open returns a file which can be iterated over. When you iterate over a file, you get the lines from that file. tuple can take an iterator and instantiate a tuple instance for you from the iterator that you give it. lines is a tuple created from the lines of the file.

According to Python's Methods of File Objects, the simplest way to convert a text file into a list is:
with open('file.txt') as f:
my_list = list(f)
# my_list = [x.rstrip() for x in f] # remove line breaks
Demo
If you just need to iterate over the text file lines, you can use:
with open('file.txt') as f:
for line in f:
...
Old answer:
Using with and readlines() :
with open('file.txt') as f:
lines = f.readlines()
If you don't care about closing the file, this one-liner will work:
lines = open('file.txt').readlines()
The traditional way:
f = open('file.txt') # Open file on read mode
lines = f.read().splitlines() # List with stripped line-breaks
f.close() # Close file

If you want the \n included:
with open(fname) as f:
content = f.readlines()
If you do not want \n included:
with open(fname) as f:
content = f.read().splitlines()

You could simply do the following, as has been suggested:
with open('/your/path/file') as f:
my_lines = f.readlines()
Note that this approach has 2 downsides:
1) You store all the lines in memory. In the general case, this is a very bad idea. The file could be very large, and you could run out of memory. Even if it's not large, it is simply a waste of memory.
2) This does not allow processing of each line as you read them. So if you process your lines after this, it is not efficient (requires two passes rather than one).
A better approach for the general case would be the following:
with open('/your/path/file') as f:
for line in f:
process(line)
Where you define your process function any way you want. For example:
def process(line):
if 'save the world' in line.lower():
superman.save_the_world()
(The implementation of the Superman class is left as an exercise for you).
This will work nicely for any file size and you go through your file in just 1 pass. This is typically how generic parsers will work.

Having a Text file content:
line 1
line 2
line 3
We can use this Python script in the same directory of the txt above
>>> with open("myfile.txt", encoding="utf-8") as file:
... x = [l.rstrip("\n") for l in file]
>>> x
['line 1','line 2','line 3']
Using append:
x = []
with open("myfile.txt") as file:
for l in file:
x.append(l.strip())
Or:
>>> x = open("myfile.txt").read().splitlines()
>>> x
['line 1', 'line 2', 'line 3']
Or:
>>> x = open("myfile.txt").readlines()
>>> x
['linea 1\n', 'line 2\n', 'line 3\n']
Or:
def print_output(lines_in_textfile):
print("lines_in_textfile =", lines_in_textfile)
y = [x.rstrip() for x in open("001.txt")]
print_output(y)
with open('001.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as file:
file = file.read().splitlines()
print_output(file)
with open('001.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as file:
file = [x.rstrip("\n") for x in file]
print_output(file)
output:
lines_in_textfile = ['line 1', 'line 2', 'line 3']
lines_in_textfile = ['line 1', 'line 2', 'line 3']
lines_in_textfile = ['line 1', 'line 2', 'line 3']

Introduced in Python 3.4, pathlib has a really convenient method for reading in text from files, as follows:
from pathlib import Path
p = Path('my_text_file')
lines = p.read_text().splitlines()
(The splitlines call is what turns it from a string containing the whole contents of the file to a list of lines in the file.)
pathlib has a lot of handy conveniences in it. read_text is nice and concise, and you don't have to worry about opening and closing the file. If all you need to do with the file is read it all in in one go, it's a good choice.

To read a file into a list you need to do three things:
Open the file
Read the file
Store the contents as list
Fortunately Python makes it very easy to do these things so the shortest way to read a file into a list is:
lst = list(open(filename))
However I'll add some more explanation.
Opening the file
I assume that you want to open a specific file and you don't deal directly with a file-handle (or a file-like-handle). The most commonly used function to open a file in Python is open, it takes one mandatory argument and two optional ones in Python 2.7:
Filename
Mode
Buffering (I'll ignore this argument in this answer)
The filename should be a string that represents the path to the file. For example:
open('afile') # opens the file named afile in the current working directory
open('adir/afile') # relative path (relative to the current working directory)
open('C:/users/aname/afile') # absolute path (windows)
open('/usr/local/afile') # absolute path (linux)
Note that the file extension needs to be specified. This is especially important for Windows users because file extensions like .txt or .doc, etc. are hidden by default when viewed in the explorer.
The second argument is the mode, it's r by default which means "read-only". That's exactly what you need in your case.
But in case you actually want to create a file and/or write to a file you'll need a different argument here. There is an excellent answer if you want an overview.
For reading a file you can omit the mode or pass it in explicitly:
open(filename)
open(filename, 'r')
Both will open the file in read-only mode. In case you want to read in a binary file on Windows you need to use the mode rb:
open(filename, 'rb')
On other platforms the 'b' (binary mode) is simply ignored.
Now that I've shown how to open the file, let's talk about the fact that you always need to close it again. Otherwise it will keep an open file-handle to the file until the process exits (or Python garbages the file-handle).
While you could use:
f = open(filename)
# ... do stuff with f
f.close()
That will fail to close the file when something between open and close throws an exception. You could avoid that by using a try and finally:
f = open(filename)
# nothing in between!
try:
# do stuff with f
finally:
f.close()
However Python provides context managers that have a prettier syntax (but for open it's almost identical to the try and finally above):
with open(filename) as f:
# do stuff with f
# The file is always closed after the with-scope ends.
The last approach is the recommended approach to open a file in Python!
Reading the file
Okay, you've opened the file, now how to read it?
The open function returns a file object and it supports Pythons iteration protocol. Each iteration will give you a line:
with open(filename) as f:
for line in f:
print(line)
This will print each line of the file. Note however that each line will contain a newline character \n at the end (you might want to check if your Python is built with universal newlines support - otherwise you could also have \r\n on Windows or \r on Mac as newlines). If you don't want that you can could simply remove the last character (or the last two characters on Windows):
with open(filename) as f:
for line in f:
print(line[:-1])
But the last line doesn't necessarily has a trailing newline, so one shouldn't use that. One could check if it ends with a trailing newline and if so remove it:
with open(filename) as f:
for line in f:
if line.endswith('\n'):
line = line[:-1]
print(line)
But you could simply remove all whitespaces (including the \n character) from the end of the string, this will also remove all other trailing whitespaces so you have to be careful if these are important:
with open(filename) as f:
for line in f:
print(f.rstrip())
However if the lines end with \r\n (Windows "newlines") that .rstrip() will also take care of the \r!
Store the contents as list
Now that you know how to open the file and read it, it's time to store the contents in a list. The simplest option would be to use the list function:
with open(filename) as f:
lst = list(f)
In case you want to strip the trailing newlines you could use a list comprehension instead:
with open(filename) as f:
lst = [line.rstrip() for line in f]
Or even simpler: The .readlines() method of the file object by default returns a list of the lines:
with open(filename) as f:
lst = f.readlines()
This will also include the trailing newline characters, if you don't want them I would recommend the [line.rstrip() for line in f] approach because it avoids keeping two lists containing all the lines in memory.
There's an additional option to get the desired output, however it's rather "suboptimal": read the complete file in a string and then split on newlines:
with open(filename) as f:
lst = f.read().split('\n')
or:
with open(filename) as f:
lst = f.read().splitlines()
These take care of the trailing newlines automatically because the split character isn't included. However they are not ideal because you keep the file as string and as a list of lines in memory!
Summary
Use with open(...) as f when opening files because you don't need to take care of closing the file yourself and it closes the file even if some exception happens.
file objects support the iteration protocol so reading a file line-by-line is as simple as for line in the_file_object:.
Always browse the documentation for the available functions/classes. Most of the time there's a perfect match for the task or at least one or two good ones. The obvious choice in this case would be readlines() but if you want to process the lines before storing them in the list I would recommend a simple list-comprehension.

Clean and Pythonic Way of Reading the Lines of a File Into a List
First and foremost, you should focus on opening your file and reading its contents in an efficient and pythonic way. Here is an example of the way I personally DO NOT prefer:
infile = open('my_file.txt', 'r') # Open the file for reading.
data = infile.read() # Read the contents of the file.
infile.close() # Close the file since we're done using it.
Instead, I prefer the below method of opening files for both reading and writing as it
is very clean, and does not require an extra step of closing the file
once you are done using it. In the statement below, we're opening the file
for reading, and assigning it to the variable 'infile.' Once the code within
this statement has finished running, the file will be automatically closed.
# Open the file for reading.
with open('my_file.txt', 'r') as infile:
data = infile.read() # Read the contents of the file into memory.
Now we need to focus on bringing this data into a Python List because they are iterable, efficient, and flexible. In your case, the desired goal is to bring each line of the text file into a separate element. To accomplish this, we will use the splitlines() method as follows:
# Return a list of the lines, breaking at line boundaries.
my_list = data.splitlines()
The Final Product:
# Open the file for reading.
with open('my_file.txt', 'r') as infile:
data = infile.read() # Read the contents of the file into memory.
# Return a list of the lines, breaking at line boundaries.
my_list = data.splitlines()
Testing Our Code:
Contents of the text file:
A fost odatã ca-n povesti,
A fost ca niciodatã,
Din rude mãri împãrãtesti,
O prea frumoasã fatã.
Print statements for testing purposes:
print my_list # Print the list.
# Print each line in the list.
for line in my_list:
print line
# Print the fourth element in this list.
print my_list[3]
Output (different-looking because of unicode characters):
['A fost odat\xc3\xa3 ca-n povesti,', 'A fost ca niciodat\xc3\xa3,',
'Din rude m\xc3\xa3ri \xc3\xaemp\xc3\xa3r\xc3\xa3testi,', 'O prea
frumoas\xc3\xa3 fat\xc3\xa3.']
A fost odatã ca-n povesti, A fost ca niciodatã, Din rude mãri
împãrãtesti, O prea frumoasã fatã.
O prea frumoasã fatã.

Here's one more option by using list comprehensions on files;
lines = [line.rstrip() for line in open('file.txt')]
This should be more efficient way as the most of the work is done inside the Python interpreter.

f = open("your_file.txt",'r')
out = f.readlines() # will append in the list out
Now variable out is a list (array) of what you want. You could either do:
for line in out:
print (line)
Or:
for line in f:
print (line)
You'll get the same results.

Another option is numpy.genfromtxt, for example:
import numpy as np
data = np.genfromtxt("yourfile.dat",delimiter="\n")
This will make data a NumPy array with as many rows as are in your file.

Read and write text files with Python 2 and Python 3; it works with Unicode
#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# Define data
lines = [' A first string ',
'A Unicode sample: €',
'German: äöüß']
# Write text file
with open('file.txt', 'w') as fp:
fp.write('\n'.join(lines))
# Read text file
with open('file.txt', 'r') as fp:
read_lines = fp.readlines()
read_lines = [line.rstrip('\n') for line in read_lines]
print(lines == read_lines)
Things to notice:
with is a so-called context manager. It makes sure that the opened file is closed again.
All solutions here which simply make .strip() or .rstrip() will fail to reproduce the lines as they also strip the white space.
Common file endings
.txt
More advanced file writing/reading
CSV: Super simple format (read & write)
JSON: Nice for writing human-readable data; VERY commonly used (read & write)
YAML: YAML is a superset of JSON, but easier to read (read & write, comparison of JSON and YAML)
pickle: A Python serialization format (read & write)
MessagePack (Python package): More compact representation (read & write)
HDF5 (Python package): Nice for matrices (read & write)
XML: exists too *sigh* (read & write)
For your application, the following might be important:
Support by other programming languages
Reading/writing performance
Compactness (file size)
See also: Comparison of data serialization formats
In case you are rather looking for a way to make configuration files, you might want to read my short article Configuration files in Python.

If you'd like to read a file from the command line or from stdin, you can also use the fileinput module:
# reader.py
import fileinput
content = []
for line in fileinput.input():
content.append(line.strip())
fileinput.close()
Pass files to it like so:
$ python reader.py textfile.txt
Read more here: http://docs.python.org/2/library/fileinput.html

The simplest way to do it
A simple way is to:
Read the whole file as a string
Split the string line by line
In one line, that would give:
lines = open('C:/path/file.txt').read().splitlines()
However, this is quite inefficient way as this will store 2 versions of the content in memory (probably not a big issue for small files, but still). [Thanks Mark Amery].
There are 2 easier ways:
Using the file as an iterator
lines = list(open('C:/path/file.txt'))
# ... or if you want to have a list without EOL characters
lines = [l.rstrip() for l in open('C:/path/file.txt')]
If you are using Python 3.4 or above, better use pathlib to create a path for your file that you could use for other operations in your program:
from pathlib import Path
file_path = Path("C:/path/file.txt")
lines = file_path.read_text().split_lines()
# ... or ...
lines = [l.rstrip() for l in file_path.open()]

Just use the splitlines() functions. Here is an example.
inp = "file.txt"
data = open(inp)
dat = data.read()
lst = dat.splitlines()
print lst
# print(lst) # for python 3
In the output you will have the list of lines.

If you are faced with a very large / huge file and want to read faster (imagine you are in a TopCoder or HackerRank coding competition), you might read a considerably bigger chunk of lines into a memory buffer at one time, rather than just iterate line by line at file level.
buffersize = 2**16
with open(path) as f:
while True:
lines_buffer = f.readlines(buffersize)
if not lines_buffer:
break
for line in lines_buffer:
process(line)

The easiest ways to do that with some additional benefits are:
lines = list(open('filename'))
or
lines = tuple(open('filename'))
or
lines = set(open('filename'))
In the case with set, we must be remembered that we don't have the line order preserved and get rid of the duplicated lines.
Below I added an important supplement from #MarkAmery:
Since you're not calling .close on the file object nor using a with statement, in some Python implementations the file may not get closed after reading and your process will leak an open file handle.
In CPython (the normal Python implementation that most people use), this isn't a problem since the file object will get immediately garbage-collected and this will close the file, but it's nonetheless generally considered best practice to do something like:
with open('filename') as f: lines = list(f)
to ensure that the file gets closed regardless of what Python implementation you're using.

Use this:
import pandas as pd
data = pd.read_csv(filename) # You can also add parameters such as header, sep, etc.
array = data.values
data is a dataframe type, and uses values to get ndarray. You can also get a list by using array.tolist().

In case that there are also empty lines in the document I like to read in the content and pass it through filter to prevent empty string elements
with open(myFile, "r") as f:
excludeFileContent = list(filter(None, f.read().splitlines()))

Outline and Summary
With a filename, handling the file from a Path(filename) object, or directly with open(filename) as f, do one of the following:
list(fileinput.input(filename))
using with path.open() as f, call f.readlines()
list(f)
path.read_text().splitlines()
path.read_text().splitlines(keepends=True)
iterate over fileinput.input or f and list.append each line one at a time
pass f to a bound list.extend method
use f in a list comprehension
I explain the use-case for each below.
In Python, how do I read a file line-by-line?
This is an excellent question. First, let's create some sample data:
from pathlib import Path
Path('filename').write_text('foo\nbar\nbaz')
File objects are lazy iterators, so just iterate over it.
filename = 'filename'
with open(filename) as f:
for line in f:
line # do something with the line
Alternatively, if you have multiple files, use fileinput.input, another lazy iterator. With just one file:
import fileinput
for line in fileinput.input(filename):
line # process the line
or for multiple files, pass it a list of filenames:
for line in fileinput.input([filename]*2):
line # process the line
Again, f and fileinput.input above both are/return lazy iterators.
You can only use an iterator one time, so to provide functional code while avoiding verbosity I'll use the slightly more terse fileinput.input(filename) where apropos from here.
In Python, how do I read a file line-by-line into a list?
Ah but you want it in a list for some reason? I'd avoid that if possible. But if you insist... just pass the result of fileinput.input(filename) to list:
list(fileinput.input(filename))
Another direct answer is to call f.readlines, which returns the contents of the file (up to an optional hint number of characters, so you could break this up into multiple lists that way).
You can get to this file object two ways. One way is to pass the filename to the open builtin:
filename = 'filename'
with open(filename) as f:
f.readlines()
or using the new Path object from the pathlib module (which I have become quite fond of, and will use from here on):
from pathlib import Path
path = Path(filename)
with path.open() as f:
f.readlines()
list will also consume the file iterator and return a list - a quite direct method as well:
with path.open() as f:
list(f)
If you don't mind reading the entire text into memory as a single string before splitting it, you can do this as a one-liner with the Path object and the splitlines() string method. By default, splitlines removes the newlines:
path.read_text().splitlines()
If you want to keep the newlines, pass keepends=True:
path.read_text().splitlines(keepends=True)
I want to read the file line by line and append each line to the end of the list.
Now this is a bit silly to ask for, given that we've demonstrated the end result easily with several methods. But you might need to filter or operate on the lines as you make your list, so let's humor this request.
Using list.append would allow you to filter or operate on each line before you append it:
line_list = []
for line in fileinput.input(filename):
line_list.append(line)
line_list
Using list.extend would be a bit more direct, and perhaps useful if you have a preexisting list:
line_list = []
line_list.extend(fileinput.input(filename))
line_list
Or more idiomatically, we could instead use a list comprehension, and map and filter inside it if desirable:
[line for line in fileinput.input(filename)]
Or even more directly, to close the circle, just pass it to list to create a new list directly without operating on the lines:
list(fileinput.input(filename))
Conclusion
You've seen many ways to get lines from a file into a list, but I'd recommend you avoid materializing large quantities of data into a list and instead use Python's lazy iteration to process the data if possible.
That is, prefer fileinput.input or with path.open() as f.

I would try one of the below mentioned methods. The example file that I use has the name dummy.txt. You can find the file here. I presume that the file is in the same directory as the code (you can change fpath to include the proper file name and folder path).
In both the below mentioned examples, the list that you want is given by lst.
1. First method
fpath = 'dummy.txt'
with open(fpath, "r") as f: lst = [line.rstrip('\n \t') for line in f]
print lst
>>>['THIS IS LINE1.', 'THIS IS LINE2.', 'THIS IS LINE3.', 'THIS IS LINE4.']
2. In the second method, one can use csv.reader module from Python Standard Library:
import csv
fpath = 'dummy.txt'
with open(fpath) as csv_file:
csv_reader = csv.reader(csv_file, delimiter=' ')
lst = [row[0] for row in csv_reader]
print lst
>>>['THIS IS LINE1.', 'THIS IS LINE2.', 'THIS IS LINE3.', 'THIS IS LINE4.']
You can use either of the two methods. The time taken for the creation of lst is almost equal for the two methods.

I like to use the following. Reading the lines immediately.
contents = []
for line in open(filepath, 'r').readlines():
contents.append(line.strip())
Or using list comprehension:
contents = [line.strip() for line in open(filepath, 'r').readlines()]

You could also use the loadtxt command in NumPy. This checks for fewer conditions than genfromtxt, so it may be faster.
import numpy
data = numpy.loadtxt(filename, delimiter="\n")

Here is a Python(3) helper library class that I use to simplify file I/O:
import os
# handle files using a callback method, prevents repetition
def _FileIO__file_handler(file_path, mode, callback = lambda f: None):
f = open(file_path, mode)
try:
return callback(f)
except Exception as e:
raise IOError("Failed to %s file" % ["write to", "read from"][mode.lower() in "r rb r+".split(" ")])
finally:
f.close()
class FileIO:
# return the contents of a file
def read(file_path, mode = "r"):
return __file_handler(file_path, mode, lambda rf: rf.read())
# get the lines of a file
def lines(file_path, mode = "r", filter_fn = lambda line: len(line) > 0):
return [line for line in FileIO.read(file_path, mode).strip().split("\n") if filter_fn(line)]
# create or update a file (NOTE: can also be used to replace a file's original content)
def write(file_path, new_content, mode = "w"):
return __file_handler(file_path, mode, lambda wf: wf.write(new_content))
# delete a file (if it exists)
def delete(file_path):
return os.remove() if os.path.isfile(file_path) else None
You would then use the FileIO.lines function, like this:
file_ext_lines = FileIO.lines("./path/to/file.ext"):
for i, line in enumerate(file_ext_lines):
print("Line {}: {}".format(i + 1, line))
Remember that the mode ("r" by default) and filter_fn (checks for empty lines by default) parameters are optional.
You could even remove the read, write and delete methods and just leave the FileIO.lines, or even turn it into a separate method called read_lines.

Command line version
#!/bin/python3
import os
import sys
abspath = os.path.abspath(__file__)
dname = os.path.dirname(abspath)
filename = dname + sys.argv[1]
arr = open(filename).read().split("\n")
print(arr)
Run with:
python3 somefile.py input_file_name.txt

how to read data from file in pandas [duplicate]

This question's answers are a community effort. Edit existing answers to improve this post. It is not currently accepting new answers or interactions.
How do I read every line of a file in Python and store each line as an element in a list?
I want to read the file line by line and append each line to the end of the list.

This code will read the entire file into memory and remove all whitespace characters (newlines and spaces) from the end of each line:
with open(filename) as file:
lines = [line.rstrip() for line in file]
If you're working with a large file, then you should instead read and process it line-by-line:
with open(filename) as file:
for line in file:
print(line.rstrip())
In Python 3.8 and up you can use a while loop with the walrus operator like so:
with open(filename) as file:
while (line := file.readline().rstrip()):
print(line)
Depending on what you plan to do with your file and how it was encoded, you may also want to manually set the access mode and character encoding:
with open(filename, 'r', encoding='UTF-8') as file:
while (line := file.readline().rstrip()):
print(line)

See Input and Ouput:
with open('filename') as f:
lines = f.readlines()
or with stripping the newline character:
with open('filename') as f:
lines = [line.rstrip('\n') for line in f]

This is more explicit than necessary, but does what you want.
with open("file.txt") as file_in:
lines = []
for line in file_in:
lines.append(line)

This will yield an "array" of lines from the file.
lines = tuple(open(filename, 'r'))
open returns a file which can be iterated over. When you iterate over a file, you get the lines from that file. tuple can take an iterator and instantiate a tuple instance for you from the iterator that you give it. lines is a tuple created from the lines of the file.

According to Python's Methods of File Objects, the simplest way to convert a text file into a list is:
with open('file.txt') as f:
my_list = list(f)
# my_list = [x.rstrip() for x in f] # remove line breaks
Demo
If you just need to iterate over the text file lines, you can use:
with open('file.txt') as f:
for line in f:
...
Old answer:
Using with and readlines() :
with open('file.txt') as f:
lines = f.readlines()
If you don't care about closing the file, this one-liner will work:
lines = open('file.txt').readlines()
The traditional way:
f = open('file.txt') # Open file on read mode
lines = f.read().splitlines() # List with stripped line-breaks
f.close() # Close file

If you want the \n included:
with open(fname) as f:
content = f.readlines()
If you do not want \n included:
with open(fname) as f:
content = f.read().splitlines()

You could simply do the following, as has been suggested:
with open('/your/path/file') as f:
my_lines = f.readlines()
Note that this approach has 2 downsides:
1) You store all the lines in memory. In the general case, this is a very bad idea. The file could be very large, and you could run out of memory. Even if it's not large, it is simply a waste of memory.
2) This does not allow processing of each line as you read them. So if you process your lines after this, it is not efficient (requires two passes rather than one).
A better approach for the general case would be the following:
with open('/your/path/file') as f:
for line in f:
process(line)
Where you define your process function any way you want. For example:
def process(line):
if 'save the world' in line.lower():
superman.save_the_world()
(The implementation of the Superman class is left as an exercise for you).
This will work nicely for any file size and you go through your file in just 1 pass. This is typically how generic parsers will work.

Having a Text file content:
line 1
line 2
line 3
We can use this Python script in the same directory of the txt above
>>> with open("myfile.txt", encoding="utf-8") as file:
... x = [l.rstrip("\n") for l in file]
>>> x
['line 1','line 2','line 3']
Using append:
x = []
with open("myfile.txt") as file:
for l in file:
x.append(l.strip())
Or:
>>> x = open("myfile.txt").read().splitlines()
>>> x
['line 1', 'line 2', 'line 3']
Or:
>>> x = open("myfile.txt").readlines()
>>> x
['linea 1\n', 'line 2\n', 'line 3\n']
Or:
def print_output(lines_in_textfile):
print("lines_in_textfile =", lines_in_textfile)
y = [x.rstrip() for x in open("001.txt")]
print_output(y)
with open('001.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as file:
file = file.read().splitlines()
print_output(file)
with open('001.txt', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as file:
file = [x.rstrip("\n") for x in file]
print_output(file)
output:
lines_in_textfile = ['line 1', 'line 2', 'line 3']
lines_in_textfile = ['line 1', 'line 2', 'line 3']
lines_in_textfile = ['line 1', 'line 2', 'line 3']

Introduced in Python 3.4, pathlib has a really convenient method for reading in text from files, as follows:
from pathlib import Path
p = Path('my_text_file')
lines = p.read_text().splitlines()
(The splitlines call is what turns it from a string containing the whole contents of the file to a list of lines in the file.)
pathlib has a lot of handy conveniences in it. read_text is nice and concise, and you don't have to worry about opening and closing the file. If all you need to do with the file is read it all in in one go, it's a good choice.

To read a file into a list you need to do three things:
Open the file
Read the file
Store the contents as list
Fortunately Python makes it very easy to do these things so the shortest way to read a file into a list is:
lst = list(open(filename))
However I'll add some more explanation.
Opening the file
I assume that you want to open a specific file and you don't deal directly with a file-handle (or a file-like-handle). The most commonly used function to open a file in Python is open, it takes one mandatory argument and two optional ones in Python 2.7:
Filename
Mode
Buffering (I'll ignore this argument in this answer)
The filename should be a string that represents the path to the file. For example:
open('afile') # opens the file named afile in the current working directory
open('adir/afile') # relative path (relative to the current working directory)
open('C:/users/aname/afile') # absolute path (windows)
open('/usr/local/afile') # absolute path (linux)
Note that the file extension needs to be specified. This is especially important for Windows users because file extensions like .txt or .doc, etc. are hidden by default when viewed in the explorer.
The second argument is the mode, it's r by default which means "read-only". That's exactly what you need in your case.
But in case you actually want to create a file and/or write to a file you'll need a different argument here. There is an excellent answer if you want an overview.
For reading a file you can omit the mode or pass it in explicitly:
open(filename)
open(filename, 'r')
Both will open the file in read-only mode. In case you want to read in a binary file on Windows you need to use the mode rb:
open(filename, 'rb')
On other platforms the 'b' (binary mode) is simply ignored.
Now that I've shown how to open the file, let's talk about the fact that you always need to close it again. Otherwise it will keep an open file-handle to the file until the process exits (or Python garbages the file-handle).
While you could use:
f = open(filename)
# ... do stuff with f
f.close()
That will fail to close the file when something between open and close throws an exception. You could avoid that by using a try and finally:
f = open(filename)
# nothing in between!
try:
# do stuff with f
finally:
f.close()
However Python provides context managers that have a prettier syntax (but for open it's almost identical to the try and finally above):
with open(filename) as f:
# do stuff with f
# The file is always closed after the with-scope ends.
The last approach is the recommended approach to open a file in Python!
Reading the file
Okay, you've opened the file, now how to read it?
The open function returns a file object and it supports Pythons iteration protocol. Each iteration will give you a line:
with open(filename) as f:
for line in f:
print(line)
This will print each line of the file. Note however that each line will contain a newline character \n at the end (you might want to check if your Python is built with universal newlines support - otherwise you could also have \r\n on Windows or \r on Mac as newlines). If you don't want that you can could simply remove the last character (or the last two characters on Windows):
with open(filename) as f:
for line in f:
print(line[:-1])
But the last line doesn't necessarily has a trailing newline, so one shouldn't use that. One could check if it ends with a trailing newline and if so remove it:
with open(filename) as f:
for line in f:
if line.endswith('\n'):
line = line[:-1]
print(line)
But you could simply remove all whitespaces (including the \n character) from the end of the string, this will also remove all other trailing whitespaces so you have to be careful if these are important:
with open(filename) as f:
for line in f:
print(f.rstrip())
However if the lines end with \r\n (Windows "newlines") that .rstrip() will also take care of the \r!
Store the contents as list
Now that you know how to open the file and read it, it's time to store the contents in a list. The simplest option would be to use the list function:
with open(filename) as f:
lst = list(f)
In case you want to strip the trailing newlines you could use a list comprehension instead:
with open(filename) as f:
lst = [line.rstrip() for line in f]
Or even simpler: The .readlines() method of the file object by default returns a list of the lines:
with open(filename) as f:
lst = f.readlines()
This will also include the trailing newline characters, if you don't want them I would recommend the [line.rstrip() for line in f] approach because it avoids keeping two lists containing all the lines in memory.
There's an additional option to get the desired output, however it's rather "suboptimal": read the complete file in a string and then split on newlines:
with open(filename) as f:
lst = f.read().split('\n')
or:
with open(filename) as f:
lst = f.read().splitlines()
These take care of the trailing newlines automatically because the split character isn't included. However they are not ideal because you keep the file as string and as a list of lines in memory!
Summary
Use with open(...) as f when opening files because you don't need to take care of closing the file yourself and it closes the file even if some exception happens.
file objects support the iteration protocol so reading a file line-by-line is as simple as for line in the_file_object:.
Always browse the documentation for the available functions/classes. Most of the time there's a perfect match for the task or at least one or two good ones. The obvious choice in this case would be readlines() but if you want to process the lines before storing them in the list I would recommend a simple list-comprehension.

Clean and Pythonic Way of Reading the Lines of a File Into a List
First and foremost, you should focus on opening your file and reading its contents in an efficient and pythonic way. Here is an example of the way I personally DO NOT prefer:
infile = open('my_file.txt', 'r') # Open the file for reading.
data = infile.read() # Read the contents of the file.
infile.close() # Close the file since we're done using it.
Instead, I prefer the below method of opening files for both reading and writing as it
is very clean, and does not require an extra step of closing the file
once you are done using it. In the statement below, we're opening the file
for reading, and assigning it to the variable 'infile.' Once the code within
this statement has finished running, the file will be automatically closed.
# Open the file for reading.
with open('my_file.txt', 'r') as infile:
data = infile.read() # Read the contents of the file into memory.
Now we need to focus on bringing this data into a Python List because they are iterable, efficient, and flexible. In your case, the desired goal is to bring each line of the text file into a separate element. To accomplish this, we will use the splitlines() method as follows:
# Return a list of the lines, breaking at line boundaries.
my_list = data.splitlines()
The Final Product:
# Open the file for reading.
with open('my_file.txt', 'r') as infile:
data = infile.read() # Read the contents of the file into memory.
# Return a list of the lines, breaking at line boundaries.
my_list = data.splitlines()
Testing Our Code:
Contents of the text file:
A fost odatã ca-n povesti,
A fost ca niciodatã,
Din rude mãri împãrãtesti,
O prea frumoasã fatã.
Print statements for testing purposes:
print my_list # Print the list.
# Print each line in the list.
for line in my_list:
print line
# Print the fourth element in this list.
print my_list[3]
Output (different-looking because of unicode characters):
['A fost odat\xc3\xa3 ca-n povesti,', 'A fost ca niciodat\xc3\xa3,',
'Din rude m\xc3\xa3ri \xc3\xaemp\xc3\xa3r\xc3\xa3testi,', 'O prea
frumoas\xc3\xa3 fat\xc3\xa3.']
A fost odatã ca-n povesti, A fost ca niciodatã, Din rude mãri
împãrãtesti, O prea frumoasã fatã.
O prea frumoasã fatã.

Here's one more option by using list comprehensions on files;
lines = [line.rstrip() for line in open('file.txt')]
This should be more efficient way as the most of the work is done inside the Python interpreter.

f = open("your_file.txt",'r')
out = f.readlines() # will append in the list out
Now variable out is a list (array) of what you want. You could either do:
for line in out:
print (line)
Or:
for line in f:
print (line)
You'll get the same results.

Another option is numpy.genfromtxt, for example:
import numpy as np
data = np.genfromtxt("yourfile.dat",delimiter="\n")
This will make data a NumPy array with as many rows as are in your file.

Read and write text files with Python 2 and Python 3; it works with Unicode
#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# Define data
lines = [' A first string ',
'A Unicode sample: €',
'German: äöüß']
# Write text file
with open('file.txt', 'w') as fp:
fp.write('\n'.join(lines))
# Read text file
with open('file.txt', 'r') as fp:
read_lines = fp.readlines()
read_lines = [line.rstrip('\n') for line in read_lines]
print(lines == read_lines)
Things to notice:
with is a so-called context manager. It makes sure that the opened file is closed again.
All solutions here which simply make .strip() or .rstrip() will fail to reproduce the lines as they also strip the white space.
Common file endings
.txt
More advanced file writing/reading
CSV: Super simple format (read & write)
JSON: Nice for writing human-readable data; VERY commonly used (read & write)
YAML: YAML is a superset of JSON, but easier to read (read & write, comparison of JSON and YAML)
pickle: A Python serialization format (read & write)
MessagePack (Python package): More compact representation (read & write)
HDF5 (Python package): Nice for matrices (read & write)
XML: exists too *sigh* (read & write)
For your application, the following might be important:
Support by other programming languages
Reading/writing performance
Compactness (file size)
See also: Comparison of data serialization formats
In case you are rather looking for a way to make configuration files, you might want to read my short article Configuration files in Python.

If you'd like to read a file from the command line or from stdin, you can also use the fileinput module:
# reader.py
import fileinput
content = []
for line in fileinput.input():
content.append(line.strip())
fileinput.close()
Pass files to it like so:
$ python reader.py textfile.txt
Read more here: http://docs.python.org/2/library/fileinput.html

The simplest way to do it
A simple way is to:
Read the whole file as a string
Split the string line by line
In one line, that would give:
lines = open('C:/path/file.txt').read().splitlines()
However, this is quite inefficient way as this will store 2 versions of the content in memory (probably not a big issue for small files, but still). [Thanks Mark Amery].
There are 2 easier ways:
Using the file as an iterator
lines = list(open('C:/path/file.txt'))
# ... or if you want to have a list without EOL characters
lines = [l.rstrip() for l in open('C:/path/file.txt')]
If you are using Python 3.4 or above, better use pathlib to create a path for your file that you could use for other operations in your program:
from pathlib import Path
file_path = Path("C:/path/file.txt")
lines = file_path.read_text().split_lines()
# ... or ...
lines = [l.rstrip() for l in file_path.open()]

Just use the splitlines() functions. Here is an example.
inp = "file.txt"
data = open(inp)
dat = data.read()
lst = dat.splitlines()
print lst
# print(lst) # for python 3
In the output you will have the list of lines.

If you are faced with a very large / huge file and want to read faster (imagine you are in a TopCoder or HackerRank coding competition), you might read a considerably bigger chunk of lines into a memory buffer at one time, rather than just iterate line by line at file level.
buffersize = 2**16
with open(path) as f:
while True:
lines_buffer = f.readlines(buffersize)
if not lines_buffer:
break
for line in lines_buffer:
process(line)

The easiest ways to do that with some additional benefits are:
lines = list(open('filename'))
or
lines = tuple(open('filename'))
or
lines = set(open('filename'))
In the case with set, we must be remembered that we don't have the line order preserved and get rid of the duplicated lines.
Below I added an important supplement from #MarkAmery:
Since you're not calling .close on the file object nor using a with statement, in some Python implementations the file may not get closed after reading and your process will leak an open file handle.
In CPython (the normal Python implementation that most people use), this isn't a problem since the file object will get immediately garbage-collected and this will close the file, but it's nonetheless generally considered best practice to do something like:
with open('filename') as f: lines = list(f)
to ensure that the file gets closed regardless of what Python implementation you're using.

Use this:
import pandas as pd
data = pd.read_csv(filename) # You can also add parameters such as header, sep, etc.
array = data.values
data is a dataframe type, and uses values to get ndarray. You can also get a list by using array.tolist().

In case that there are also empty lines in the document I like to read in the content and pass it through filter to prevent empty string elements
with open(myFile, "r") as f:
excludeFileContent = list(filter(None, f.read().splitlines()))

Outline and Summary
With a filename, handling the file from a Path(filename) object, or directly with open(filename) as f, do one of the following:
list(fileinput.input(filename))
using with path.open() as f, call f.readlines()
list(f)
path.read_text().splitlines()
path.read_text().splitlines(keepends=True)
iterate over fileinput.input or f and list.append each line one at a time
pass f to a bound list.extend method
use f in a list comprehension
I explain the use-case for each below.
In Python, how do I read a file line-by-line?
This is an excellent question. First, let's create some sample data:
from pathlib import Path
Path('filename').write_text('foo\nbar\nbaz')
File objects are lazy iterators, so just iterate over it.
filename = 'filename'
with open(filename) as f:
for line in f:
line # do something with the line
Alternatively, if you have multiple files, use fileinput.input, another lazy iterator. With just one file:
import fileinput
for line in fileinput.input(filename):
line # process the line
or for multiple files, pass it a list of filenames:
for line in fileinput.input([filename]*2):
line # process the line
Again, f and fileinput.input above both are/return lazy iterators.
You can only use an iterator one time, so to provide functional code while avoiding verbosity I'll use the slightly more terse fileinput.input(filename) where apropos from here.
In Python, how do I read a file line-by-line into a list?
Ah but you want it in a list for some reason? I'd avoid that if possible. But if you insist... just pass the result of fileinput.input(filename) to list:
list(fileinput.input(filename))
Another direct answer is to call f.readlines, which returns the contents of the file (up to an optional hint number of characters, so you could break this up into multiple lists that way).
You can get to this file object two ways. One way is to pass the filename to the open builtin:
filename = 'filename'
with open(filename) as f:
f.readlines()
or using the new Path object from the pathlib module (which I have become quite fond of, and will use from here on):
from pathlib import Path
path = Path(filename)
with path.open() as f:
f.readlines()
list will also consume the file iterator and return a list - a quite direct method as well:
with path.open() as f:
list(f)
If you don't mind reading the entire text into memory as a single string before splitting it, you can do this as a one-liner with the Path object and the splitlines() string method. By default, splitlines removes the newlines:
path.read_text().splitlines()
If you want to keep the newlines, pass keepends=True:
path.read_text().splitlines(keepends=True)
I want to read the file line by line and append each line to the end of the list.
Now this is a bit silly to ask for, given that we've demonstrated the end result easily with several methods. But you might need to filter or operate on the lines as you make your list, so let's humor this request.
Using list.append would allow you to filter or operate on each line before you append it:
line_list = []
for line in fileinput.input(filename):
line_list.append(line)
line_list
Using list.extend would be a bit more direct, and perhaps useful if you have a preexisting list:
line_list = []
line_list.extend(fileinput.input(filename))
line_list
Or more idiomatically, we could instead use a list comprehension, and map and filter inside it if desirable:
[line for line in fileinput.input(filename)]
Or even more directly, to close the circle, just pass it to list to create a new list directly without operating on the lines:
list(fileinput.input(filename))
Conclusion
You've seen many ways to get lines from a file into a list, but I'd recommend you avoid materializing large quantities of data into a list and instead use Python's lazy iteration to process the data if possible.
That is, prefer fileinput.input or with path.open() as f.

I would try one of the below mentioned methods. The example file that I use has the name dummy.txt. You can find the file here. I presume that the file is in the same directory as the code (you can change fpath to include the proper file name and folder path).
In both the below mentioned examples, the list that you want is given by lst.
1. First method
fpath = 'dummy.txt'
with open(fpath, "r") as f: lst = [line.rstrip('\n \t') for line in f]
print lst
>>>['THIS IS LINE1.', 'THIS IS LINE2.', 'THIS IS LINE3.', 'THIS IS LINE4.']
2. In the second method, one can use csv.reader module from Python Standard Library:
import csv
fpath = 'dummy.txt'
with open(fpath) as csv_file:
csv_reader = csv.reader(csv_file, delimiter=' ')
lst = [row[0] for row in csv_reader]
print lst
>>>['THIS IS LINE1.', 'THIS IS LINE2.', 'THIS IS LINE3.', 'THIS IS LINE4.']
You can use either of the two methods. The time taken for the creation of lst is almost equal for the two methods.

I like to use the following. Reading the lines immediately.
contents = []
for line in open(filepath, 'r').readlines():
contents.append(line.strip())
Or using list comprehension:
contents = [line.strip() for line in open(filepath, 'r').readlines()]

You could also use the loadtxt command in NumPy. This checks for fewer conditions than genfromtxt, so it may be faster.
import numpy
data = numpy.loadtxt(filename, delimiter="\n")

Here is a Python(3) helper library class that I use to simplify file I/O:
import os
# handle files using a callback method, prevents repetition
def _FileIO__file_handler(file_path, mode, callback = lambda f: None):
f = open(file_path, mode)
try:
return callback(f)
except Exception as e:
raise IOError("Failed to %s file" % ["write to", "read from"][mode.lower() in "r rb r+".split(" ")])
finally:
f.close()
class FileIO:
# return the contents of a file
def read(file_path, mode = "r"):
return __file_handler(file_path, mode, lambda rf: rf.read())
# get the lines of a file
def lines(file_path, mode = "r", filter_fn = lambda line: len(line) > 0):
return [line for line in FileIO.read(file_path, mode).strip().split("\n") if filter_fn(line)]
# create or update a file (NOTE: can also be used to replace a file's original content)
def write(file_path, new_content, mode = "w"):
return __file_handler(file_path, mode, lambda wf: wf.write(new_content))
# delete a file (if it exists)
def delete(file_path):
return os.remove() if os.path.isfile(file_path) else None
You would then use the FileIO.lines function, like this:
file_ext_lines = FileIO.lines("./path/to/file.ext"):
for i, line in enumerate(file_ext_lines):
print("Line {}: {}".format(i + 1, line))
Remember that the mode ("r" by default) and filter_fn (checks for empty lines by default) parameters are optional.
You could even remove the read, write and delete methods and just leave the FileIO.lines, or even turn it into a separate method called read_lines.

Command line version
#!/bin/python3
import os
import sys
abspath = os.path.abspath(__file__)
dname = os.path.dirname(abspath)
filename = dname + sys.argv[1]
arr = open(filename).read().split("\n")
print(arr)
Run with:
python3 somefile.py input_file_name.txt

Prepend line to beginning of a file

I can do this using a separate file, but how do I append a line to the beginning of a file?
f=open('log.txt','a')
f.seek(0) #get to the first position
f.write("text")
f.close()
This starts writing from the end of the file since the file is opened in append mode.

In modes 'a' or 'a+', any writing is done at the end of the file, even if at the current moment when the write() function is triggered the file's pointer is not at the end of the file: the pointer is moved to the end of file before any writing. You can do what you want in two manners.
1st way, can be used if there are no issues to load the file into memory:
def line_prepender(filename, line):
with open(filename, 'r+') as f:
content = f.read()
f.seek(0, 0)
f.write(line.rstrip('\r\n') + '\n' + content)
2nd way:
def line_pre_adder(filename, line_to_prepend):
f = fileinput.input(filename, inplace=1)
for xline in f:
if f.isfirstline():
print line_to_prepend.rstrip('\r\n') + '\n' + xline,
else:
print xline,
I don't know how this method works under the hood and if it can be employed on big big file. The argument 1 passed to input is what allows to rewrite a line in place; the following lines must be moved forwards or backwards in order that the inplace operation takes place, but I don't know the mechanism

In all filesystems that I am familiar with, you can't do this in-place. You have to use an auxiliary file (which you can then rename to take the name of the original file).

To put code to NPE's answer, I think the most efficient way to do this is:
def insert(originalfile,string):
with open(originalfile,'r') as f:
with open('newfile.txt','w') as f2:
f2.write(string)
f2.write(f.read())
os.remove(originalfile)
os.rename('newfile.txt',originalfile)

Different Idea:
(1) You save the original file as a variable.
(2) You overwrite the original file with new information.
(3) You append the original file in the data below the new information.
Code:
with open(<filename>,'r') as contents:
save = contents.read()
with open(<filename>,'w') as contents:
contents.write(< New Information >)
with open(<filename>,'a') as contents:
contents.write(save)

The clear way to do this is as follows if you do not mind writing the file again
with open("a.txt", 'r+') as fp:
lines = fp.readlines() # lines is list of line, each element '...\n'
lines.insert(0, one_line) # you can use any index if you know the line index
fp.seek(0) # file pointer locates at the beginning to write the whole file again
fp.writelines(lines) # write whole lists again to the same file
Note that this is not in-place replacement. It's writing a file again.
In summary, you read a file and save it to a list and modify the list and write the list again to a new file with the same filename.

num = [1, 2, 3] #List containing Integers
with open("ex3.txt", 'r+') as file:
readcontent = file.read() # store the read value of exe.txt into
# readcontent
file.seek(0, 0) #Takes the cursor to top line
for i in num: # writing content of list One by One.
file.write(str(i) + "\n") #convert int to str since write() deals
# with str
file.write(readcontent) #after content of string are written, I return
#back content that were in the file

There's no way to do this with any built-in functions, because it would be terribly inefficient. You'd need to shift the existing contents of the file down each time you add a line at the front.
There's a Unix/Linux utility tail which can read from the end of a file. Perhaps you can find that useful in your application.

If the file is the too big to use as a list, and you simply want to reverse the file, you can initially write the file in reversed order and then read one line at the time from the file's end (and write it to another file) with file-read-backwards module

An improvement over the existing solution provided by #eyquem is as below:
def prepend_text(filename: Union[str, Path], text: str):
with fileinput.input(filename, inplace=True) as file:
for line in file:
if file.isfirstline():
print(text)
print(line, end="")
It is typed, neat, more readable, and uses some improvements python got in recent years like context managers :)

I tried a different approach:
I wrote first line into a header.csv file. body.csv was the second file. Used Windows type command to concatenate them one by one into final.csv.
import os
os.system('type c:\\\header.csv c:\\\body.csv > c:\\\final.csv')

with open("fruits.txt", "r+") as file:
file.write("bab111y")
file.seek(0)
content = file.read()
print(content)

How to delete parts of a file in python?

I have a file named a.txt which looks like this:
I'm the first line
I'm the second line.
There may be more lines here.
I'm below an empty line.
I'm a line.
More lines here.
Now, I want to remove the contents above the empty line(including the empty line itself).
How could I do this in a Pythonic way?

Basically you can't delete stuff from the beginning of a file, so you will have to write to a new file.
I think the pythonic way looks like this:
# get a iterator over the lines in the file:
with open("input.txt", 'rt') as lines:
# while the line is not empty drop it
for line in lines:
if not line.strip():
break
# now lines is at the point after the first paragraph
# so write out everything from here
with open("output.txt", 'wt') as out:
out.writelines(lines)
Here are some simpler versions of this, without with for older Python versions:
lines = open("input.txt", 'rt')
for line in lines:
if not line.strip():
break
open("output.txt", 'wt').writelines(lines)
and a very straight forward version that simply splits the file at the empty line:
# first, read everything from the old file
text = open("input.txt", 'rt').read()
# split it at the first empty line ("\n\n")
first, rest = text.split('\n\n',1)
# make a new file and write the rest
open("output.txt", 'wt').write(rest)
Note that this can be pretty fragile, for example windows often uses \r\n as a single linebreak, so a empty line would be \r\n\r\n instead. But often you know the format of the file uses one kind of linebreaks only, so this could be fine.

Naive approach by iterating over the lines in the file one by one top to bottom:
#!/usr/bin/env python
with open("4692065.txt", 'r') as src, open("4692065.cut.txt", "w") as dest:
keep = False
for line in src:
if keep: dest.write(line)
if line.strip() == '': keep = True

The fileinput module (from the standard library) is convenient for this kind of thing. It sets things up so you can act as though your are editing the file "in-place":
import fileinput
import sys
fileobj=iter(fileinput.input(['a.txt'], inplace=True))
# iterate through the file until you find an empty line.
for line in fileobj:
if not line.strip():
break
# Iterators (like `fileobj`) pick up where they left off.
# Starting a new for-loop saves you one `if` statement and boolean variable.
for line in fileobj:
sys.stdout.write(line)

Any idea how big the file is going to be?
You could read the file into memory:
f = open('your_file', 'r')
lines = f.readlines()
which will read the file line by line and store those lines in a list (lines).
Then, close the file and reopen with 'w':
f.close()
f = open('your_file', 'w')
for line in lines:
if your_if_here:
f.write(line)
This will overwrite the current file. Then you can pick and choose which lines from the list you want to write back in. Probably not a very good idea if the file gets to large though, since the entire file has to reside in memory. But, it doesn't require that you create a second file to dump your output.

from itertools import dropwhile, islice
def content_after_emptyline(file_object):
return islice(dropwhile(lambda line: line.strip(), file_object), 1, None)
with open("filename") as f:
for line in content_after_emptyline(f):
print line,

You could do a little something like this:
with open('a.txt', 'r') as file:
lines = file.readlines()
blank_line = lines.index('\n')
lines = lines[blank_line+1:] #\n is the index of the blank line
with open('a.txt', 'w') as file:
file.write('\n'.join(lines))
and that makes the job much simpler.

Replace string within file contents [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Replacing instances of a character in a string
(17 answers)
How to search and replace text in a file?
(22 answers)
How to read a large file - line by line?
(11 answers)
Writing a list to a file with Python, with newlines
(26 answers)
Closed 7 months ago.
How can I open a file, Stud.txt, and then replace any occurences of "A" with "Orange"?

with open("Stud.txt", "rt") as fin:
with open("out.txt", "wt") as fout:
for line in fin:
fout.write(line.replace('A', 'Orange'))

If you'd like to replace the strings in the same file, you probably have to read its contents into a local variable, close it, and re-open it for writing:
I am using the with statement in this example, which closes the file after the with block is terminated - either normally when the last command finishes executing, or by an exception.
def inplace_change(filename, old_string, new_string):
# Safely read the input filename using 'with'
with open(filename) as f:
s = f.read()
if old_string not in s:
print('"{old_string}" not found in {filename}.'.format(**locals()))
return
# Safely write the changed content, if found in the file
with open(filename, 'w') as f:
print('Changing "{old_string}" to "{new_string}" in {filename}'.format(**locals()))
s = s.replace(old_string, new_string)
f.write(s)
It is worth mentioning that if the filenames were different, we could have done this more elegantly with a single with statement.

#!/usr/bin/python
with open(FileName) as f:
newText=f.read().replace('A', 'Orange')
with open(FileName, "w") as f:
f.write(newText)

Using pathlib (https://docs.python.org/3/library/pathlib.html)
from pathlib import Path
file = Path('Stud.txt')
file.write_text(file.read_text().replace('A', 'Orange'))
If input and output files were different you would use two different variables for read_text and write_text.
If you wanted a change more complex than a single replacement, you would assign the result of read_text to a variable, process it and save the new content to another variable, and then save the new content with write_text.
If your file was large you would prefer an approach that does not read the whole file in memory, but rather process it line by line as show by Gareth Davidson in another answer (https://stackoverflow.com/a/4128192/3981273), which of course requires to use two distinct files for input and output.

Something like
file = open('Stud.txt')
contents = file.read()
replaced_contents = contents.replace('A', 'Orange')
<do stuff with the result>

with open('Stud.txt','r') as f:
newlines = []
for line in f.readlines():
newlines.append(line.replace('A', 'Orange'))
with open('Stud.txt', 'w') as f:
for line in newlines:
f.write(line)

If you are on linux and just want to replace the word dog with catyou can do:
text.txt:
Hi, i am a dog and dog's are awesome, i love dogs! dog dog dogs!
Linux Command:
sed -i 's/dog/cat/g' test.txt
Output:
Hi, i am a cat and cat's are awesome, i love cats! cat cat cats!
Original Post: https://askubuntu.com/questions/20414/find-and-replace-text-within-a-file-using-commands

easiest way is to do it with regular expressions, assuming that you want to iterate over each line in the file (where 'A' would be stored) you do...
import re
input = file('C:\full_path\Stud.txt', 'r')
#when you try and write to a file with write permissions, it clears the file and writes only #what you tell it to the file. So we have to save the file first.
saved_input
for eachLine in input:
saved_input.append(eachLine)
#now we change entries with 'A' to 'Orange'
for i in range(0, len(old):
search = re.sub('A', 'Orange', saved_input[i])
if search is not None:
saved_input[i] = search
#now we open the file in write mode (clearing it) and writing saved_input back to it
input = file('C:\full_path\Stud.txt', 'w')
for each in saved_input:
input.write(each)