How do I print the content of a .txt file in Python?

Question

I'm very new to programming (obviously) and really advanced computer stuff in general. I've only have basic computer knowledge, so I decided I wanted to learn more. Thus I'm teaching myself (through videos and ebooks) how to program.

Anyways, I'm working on a piece of code that will open a file, print out the contents on the screen, ask you if you want to edit/delete/etc the contents, do it, and then re-print out the results and ask you for confirmation to save.

I'm stuck at the printing the contents of the file. I don't know what command to use to do this. I've tried typing in several commands previously but here is the latest I've tried and no the code isn't complete:

from sys import argv

script, filename = argv
print "Who are you?"
name = raw_input()

print "What file are you looking for today?"
file = raw_input()

print (file)

print "Ok then, here's the file you wanted." 

print "Would you like to delete the contents? Yes or No?"

I'm trying to write these practice codes to include as much as I've learned thus far. Also I'm working on Ubuntu 13.04 and Python 2.7.4 if that makes any difference. Thanks for any help thus far :)

Does this answer your question? How to print a file to stdout? — starball
– starball ♦, Commented Aug 16, 2022 at 23:30

Kara · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-15 16:09:15Z

85

Opening a file in python for reading is easy:

f = open('example.txt', 'r')

To get everything in the file, just use read()

file_contents = f.read()

And to print the contents, just do:

print (file_contents)

Don't forget to close the file when you're done.

f.close()

edited Aug 15, 2013 at 16:09

Kara

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answered Aug 15, 2013 at 15:50

Greg

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1 Comment

pcm Over a year ago

You should use the with clause, as others have mentioned in solutions below, as the context manager will take care of closing the file.

user2555451 · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-15 15:46:09Z

53

Just do this:

>>> with open("path/to/file") as f: # The with keyword automatically closes the file when you are done
...     print f.read()

This will print the file in the terminal.

answered Aug 15, 2013 at 15:46

user2555451

2 Comments

Mawg Over a year ago

Because it is more Pythonic ;-)

LightCC Over a year ago

It seems in newer versions of Python it should be print(f.read())

Stephan · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-15 15:46:12Z

5

with open("filename.txt", "w+") as file:
  for line in file:
    print line

This with statement automatically opens and closes it for you and you can iterate over the lines of the file with a simple for loop

answered Aug 15, 2013 at 15:46

Stephan

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Comments

PythonProgrammi · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-11 17:30:55Z

How to read and print the content of a txt file

Assume you got a file called file.txt that you want to read in a program and the content is this:

this is the content of the file
with open you can read it and
then with a loop you can print it
on the screen. Using enconding='utf-8'
you avoid some strange convertions of
caracters. With strip(), you avoid printing
an empty line between each (not empty) line

You can read this content: write the following script in notepad:

with open("file.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8") as file:
    for line in file:
        print(line.strip())

save it as readfile.py for example, in the same folder of the txt file.

Then you run it (shift + right click of the mouse and select the prompt from the contextual menu) writing in the prompt:

C:\examples> python readfile.py

You should get this. Play attention to the word, they have to be written just as you see them and to the indentation. It is important in python. Use always the same indentation in each file (4 spaces are good).

output

this is the content of the file
with open you can read it and
then with a loop you can print it
on the screen. Using enconding='utf-8'
you avoid some strange convertions of
caracters. With strip(), you avoid printing
an empty line between each (not empty) line

Jon Clements · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-15 16:10:30Z

3

to input a file:

fin = open(filename) #filename should be a string type: e.g filename = 'file.txt'

to output this file you can do:

for element in fin:
    print element

if the elements are a string you'd better add this before print:

element = element.strip()

strip() remove notations like this: /n

edited Aug 15, 2013 at 16:10

Jon Clements

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answered Aug 15, 2013 at 15:52

SamuraiT

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2 Comments

SamuraiT Over a year ago

after opening a file, you can print everything by this as well: print fin

Jon Clements Over a year ago

I've formatted your post slightly - you might also want to change /n to be \n...

Ninja420 · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-17 07:36:00Z

2

print ''.join(file('example.txt'))

answered Feb 17, 2017 at 7:36

Ninja420

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Comments

ANDuser · Accepted Answer · 2021-05-02 20:24:48Z

2

single line to read/print contents of a file

reading file : example.txt

 print(open('example.txt', 'r').read())

output:

u r reading the contents of example.txt file

edited May 2, 2021 at 20:24

answered May 2, 2021 at 20:19

ANDuser

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Comments

Noel Evans · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-15 15:46:20Z

1

This will give you the contents of a file separated, line-by-line in a list:

with open('xyz.txt') as f_obj:
    f_obj.readlines()

answered Aug 15, 2013 at 15:46

Noel Evans

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Comments

Manjeet · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-20 10:09:57Z

1

It's pretty simple

#Opening file
f= open('sample.txt')
#reading everything in file
r=f.read()
#reading at particular index
r=f.read(1)
#print
print(r)

Presenting snapshot from my visual studio IDE.

answered Apr 20, 2019 at 10:09

Manjeet

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Comments

user11936470 · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-15 11:37:28Z

0

Reading and printing the content of a text file (.txt) in Python3

Consider this as the content of text file with the name world.txt:

Hello World! This is an example of Content of the Text file we are about to read and print
using python!

First we will open this file by doing this:

file= open("world.txt", 'r')

Now we will get the content of file in a variable using .read() like this:

content_of_file= file.read()

Finally we will just print the content_of_file variable using print command.

print(content_of_file)

Output:

Hello World! This is an example of Content of the Text file we are about to read and print using python!

answered Oct 15, 2020 at 11:37

user11936470

Comments

L Tyrone · Accepted Answer · 2024-05-21 06:12:51Z

0

This is an example of Content of the Text file we are about to read and print using python:

file= open("world.txt", 'r')
content_of_file= file.read()
print(content_of_file)

edited May 21, 2024 at 6:12

L Tyrone

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answered May 20, 2024 at 9:26

JOSHUA MINDOZOH

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