Introduction to Reading and Writing Files

File handling is an essential skill for any Python programmer. It allows you to store, retrieve, and manipulate data in files on your computer.

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to open, read, write, and close files using Python's built-in functions.

Opening Files

To work with a file in Python, you first need to open it using the open() function. The function takes the file name and mode as arguments:

• 'r': Read mode (default).
• 'w': Write mode.
• 'a': Append mode.
• 'b': Binary mode.

# Opening a file in read mode
file = open("example.txt", "r")
# Always remember to close the file after use
file.close()