Function to open .txt file and print contents not working

Question

This is my function:

def read_text():
    quotes = open("C:\blop\movie_quotes.txt")
    contents_of_file = quotes.read
    print(contents_of_file)
    quotes.close
read_text()

I am just trying to read a file and print the text within the file, but I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):File "C:/Python27/detect_profanity.py", line 6, in <module>
read_text()File "C:/Python27/detect_profanity.py", line 2, in read_text
quotes = open("C:\blop\movie_quotes.txt")
IOError: [Errno 22] invalid mode ('r') or filename: 'C:\x08lop\\movie_quotes.txt'

How can I fix it?

Besides using raw string - r"C:\blop\movie_quotes.txt", you should use with open instead of just open — Vaulstein
– Vaulstein, Commented Jul 12, 2015 at 16:17

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-23 10:41:39Z

6

Assuming the file "C:\blop\movie_quotes.txt" exists, Python is converting \b to \x08 before passing it onto open() causing your issue. You should prepend your string with r so that it becomes a raw string, and \b does not get converted to anything (other than \\b , for escaping the \).

Another issue in your code is that you are doing - contents_of_file = quotes.read. This will just put the reference to the read() function in contents_of_file name. I think you want to read the contents of the file, so you should call the read function as - contents_of_file = quotes.read().

Example:

def read_text():
    quotes = open(r"C:\blop\movie_quotes.txt")
    contents_of_file = quotes.read()
    print(contents_of_file)
    quotes.close()
read_text()

You can also, use the with statement here as:

def read_text():
    with open(r"C:\blop\movie_quotes.txt") as quotes:
        contents_of_file = quotes.read()
        print(contents_of_file)
read_text()

edited Jul 23, 2015 at 10:41

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jul 12, 2015 at 16:11

Anand S Kumar

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3 Comments

rassa45 Over a year ago

You forgot the reading mode, parentheses after close(), and the availability of with open as

rassa45 Over a year ago

You also forgot to indent the portion underneath with

rassa45 Over a year ago

Otherwise, great answer

rassa45 · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-12 17:37:11Z

-1

'\b' is a special character in Python. The same as '\n' is a special character meaning the newline character, and '\t' is the tab character, and '\r' is the carriage return character.

'\\\\' is a special character meaning the backslash character. So each time you need a backslash, you need to escape it, and put two backslashes in order to print one.

open("C:\blop\movie_quotes.txt") should be open("C:\\\\blop\\\\movie_quotes.txt")

You have other errors in your code too. You are missing the parenthesis () after each function call, like read() or close().

edited Jul 12, 2015 at 17:37

rassa45

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answered Jul 12, 2015 at 16:11

Mihai Hangiu

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1 Comment

rassa45 Over a year ago

Build paths need one backslash and the OP does not have to escape the backslashes in a string. He can do something like r"C:\blop\movie_quotes.txt". The r reads the backslashes as non-esscape characters. He only needs to escape the backslashes if he is doing something like \n in his string

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