External Files

Question 1

What are some benefits of using external files?

Answer 1

Separation: cleaner and more modular code.
Reusability: Can be used across more than 1 file or program. Saves time and effort.
Memory management: Can be far more efficient (especially with larger data sets)
Collaboration: Makes it easier to work with other developers.

Question 2

Try-except: What is else for?

Answer 2

Try should only contain code that may fail. Else contains what should happen normally.

Question 3

Ways to open files.

Answer 3

open(filename, mode)
to close: filename.close()

with open(filename, mode) as name:
…
to close: done automatically

Question 4

Modes of opening a file?

Answer 4

r - read
w- write
w+ or r+ - read and write
a - append
a+ - append and read
x - create*

t-text
b-binary

Question 5

Difference between readline() and readlines()

Answer 5

.readline() reads a single line from a file (calling it more than once moves to different lines)
.readlines()
.read() reads the whole file

Question 6

.strip()

Answer 6

removes whitespace (or as an argument, other characters)

Question 7

using print() with files?

Answer 7

print(str, filename) writes the str to the file (this overwrites data)

Question 8

writing to a file with .write()

Answer 8

.write(str) writes the str to the file. Remember newline characters.

Question 9

making a new file?

Answer 9

open(new_file_name, w)
or
open(new_file_name,x)