Computer Science 1001

Lecture 29

Lecture Outline

• File input/output

– CS1001 Lecture 29 –
 Files

• Files can be used to store data.

• Data used/computed in a program is temporary.

Unless data is saved into a file, it will be lost when
the program terminates.

• Programs can also read data from a file.

• A file is placed in a directory in the file system. The

location of the file is given as either an absolute
filename or a relative filename.

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 1
 Files

• We will learn to work with text files.

• Text files are encoded in a scheme such as ASCII or

Unicode.

• When a file is opened for writing or reading, a

marker called a file pointer is positioned at the
beginning of the file.

• When data is read from or written to the file, the

file pointer moves forward.

• At any time, the file pointer indicates the last

position read or written.

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 2
 Working with files

• The basic file operations are:

1. If we are planning to read from or add to a file,
we should check that the file exists.
2. If the file exists or if a new file will be created,
open the file, indicating how the file will be used.
3. Perform the read and/or write operations on the
file.
4. Close the file.

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 3
 Testing a file’s existence

• To check whether a file exists, we can use the

os.path module, which provides many functions
related to pathnames.

• We first import the module os.path.

• The function isfile(fileName) returns True if

fileName is an existing file.

import os.path
if os.path.isfile("info.dat"):
# True if the file info.dat exists in the current directory
print("info.dat exists")

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 4
 Opening a file

• To read from or write to a file, we first have to open

the file.

• In Python, opening the file creates a file object,

which is done by calling the open function:

file = open(filename, mode)

• The mode indicates how the file will be used.

Possible values include:
Mode Description
"r" Open a file for reading (default).
"w" Open a file for writing. If the file already exists it
will be overwritten.
"a" Open a file for writing, appending to the end of
the file if the file already exists.

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 5
 Reading data

• There are three methods to read data from a file:

– read(size)
to read at most size bytes of data from the file
and return it as a string. If size is omitted the
entire file is read. If the end of the file has been
reached, an empty string ("") is returned.
– readline()
to read a single line from a file as a string (with
a newline character, \n, at the end). An empty
string is returned "" when the end of the file has
been reached. If a blank line is read, the returned
string will be "\n".
– readlines()
to read all lines in the file into a list of strings.
Each element in the list corresponds to a line in
the file.

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 6
 Example: reading data

import os.path

filename = input("Enter the filename: ")

if os.path.isfile(filename):
fileIn = open(filename,"r")

# read one line

line = fileIn.readline()
print(line)

# read 5 characters
chars = fileIn.read(5)
print(chars) # no newline char in chars

# read all remaining lines

all_lines = fileIn.readlines()
print("The file has",len(all_lines),"lines remaining")
print(all_lines)
print()

fileIn.seek(0) # go to beginning of file

print("The entire file:")
entire_file = fileIn.read()
print(entire_file)
fileIn.close()

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 7
 Example: reading data

Executing the above code on the file:

This is the first line.
This is the second line.
This is the third line.
This is the fourth line.
This is the last line.

produces:
This is the first line.

This
The file has 4 lines remaining
[’is the second line.\n’, ’This is the third line.\n’, ’This is the
fourth line.\n’, ’This is the last line.\n’]

The entire file:

This is the first line.
This is the second line.
This is the third line.
This is the fourth line.
This is the last line.

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 8
 Example: reading data

• We can also use a for loop to iterate over lines in

the file, as in:

import os.path

filename = input("Enter the filename: ")

if os.path.isfile(filename):
fileIn = open(filename,"r")
# use a for loop to read all lines in a file
for line in fileIn:
print(line)
fileIn.close()

• Sample output:

This is the first line.

This is the second line.

This is the third line.

This is the fourth line.

This is the last line.

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 9
 Writing data

• To write data to a file we can use the write()

function, passing it the string that we want to
output.

• The write() function returns the number of

characters written.

• The write function does not automatically insert

the newline character ("\n"), it should be included
in the string passed to write.

• For example,

outfile = open("test.txt", "w")

outfile.write("Welcome to Python\n")
outfile.write("Hello world!\n")
outfile.close()

creates a file with contents:

Welcome to Python
Hello world!

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 10
 Appending data

• We can append data to the end of an existing file

by using the mode "a" when opening the file.

• For example,

import os.path

filename = input("Enter the filename: ")

if os.path.isfile(filename):
fileOut = open(filename,"a")
# the file pointer is positioned at the end of the file
# add new lines to the file
fileOut.write("A new line\n")
fileOut.close()

• Using the file created on the previous slide, we would

have:

Welcome to Python
Hello world!
A new line

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 11
 Reading and writing numeric data

• To write numbers to a file, you must first convert

them into strings and use the write method to write
them to the file.

• To read numbers correctly they must be separated

by whitespace characters such as " ", "\t", "\n".

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 12
 Example: writing/reading numeric data

Here, we write 10 random integers between 0 and 9

(inclusive) to a file called numbers.txt. We then read
the values from the file and output them to the screen.
from random import randint

def main():
# Open file for writing data
outfile = open("Numbers.txt", "w")
for i in range(10):
outfile.write(str(randint(0, 9)) + " ")
outfile.close() # Close the file

# Open file for reading data

infile = open("Numbers.txt", "r")
s = infile.read()
infile.close() # Close the file
numbers = [eval(x) for x in s.split()]
for number in numbers:
print(number, end = " ")

main() # Call the main function

Sample output:
4 3 4 6 2 6 0 5 9 1

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 13
 Example: binary search
def binarySearch(key, lst):
low, high = 0, len(lst)-1 # starting indices
while low <= high:
mid = (low + high)//2 # get middle index
if key == lst[mid]:# found the key
return mid
elif key < lst[mid]: # move high to search first half
high = mid -1
elif key > lst[mid]: # move low to search second half
low = mid + 1
return -1 # didn’t find the key

def main():
infile = open("numbers.dat","r")
lst = []
for line in infile: # read numbers, one per line and add to list
lst.append(eval(line))
print("Original list:")
print(lst)
lst.sort() # list must be sorted
print("Sorted list:")
print(lst)
k = int(input("Value to search for: "))
location = binarySearch(k,lst)
if location != -1:
print("Value is at position: ", location)
else:
print("Value not found")

main()

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 14
 Example: binary search

Sample output:
Original list:
[3, 4, 7, 1, 5, 2, 4, 8, 9, 3]
Sorted list:
[1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9]
Value to search for: 4
Value is at position: 4

Original list:
[3, 4, 7, 1, 5, 2, 4, 8, 9, 3]
Sorted list:
[1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9]
Value to search for: 1
Value is at position: 0

Original list:
[3, 4, 7, 1, 5, 2, 4, 8, 9, 3]
Sorted list:
[1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9]
Value to search for: 6
Value not found

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 15
 Example: selection sort
• We can use our selection sort function to sort data
read from a file into a list as follows:
def main():
lst=[]
filename = input("Enter filename: ")
infile = open(filename,"r")
line = infile.readline()
while line != "": # read to end of file
lst.append(eval(line))
line = infile.readline()
print("Original list:")
print(lst)
selectionSort(lst)
print("Sorted list:")
print(lst)

if __name__=="__main__":
main()

• Sample output:
Enter filename: to_sort.dat
Original list:
[2.5, 3.46, 5.1, 85.2, 6.49, 5.9, 8.51, 3.264, 0.5, 2.9, 5.7,
6.498, 42.1]
Sorted list:
[0.5, 2.5, 2.9, 3.264, 3.46, 5.1, 5.7, 5.9, 6.49, 6.498, 8.51,
42.1, 85.2]

– CS1001 Lecture 29 – 16