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→PART 1 - Reading Data From Files
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</source><br>In order to read data from a text file, we need to create a special storage area (or a '''"buffer"''') that will be used to access and storage the data in a file. This special storage has different names for various programming languages (like a '''"file pointer"''' in the C programming language or as an '''"object"''' in object oriented programming languages).<br>In Python, we define an '''object''' to act as a buffer to help access the data contained within the file. To simplify things for now, you can think of an '''object''' as a '''special variable'''. You will learn more about object oriented programming later in this lab.<br><br>
:#Now lets write some python code from the ipython3 prompt to open this created file for reading. We will define and object called '''"f"''' in order to act as a buffer to store the retrieved help retrieve content from our text file. Issue the following:<source lang="python">
f = open('data.txt', 'r')
</source><br>The '''open()''' function takes two string arguments: a path to a file, and a mode option for reading, writing, appending, etc. The ''open()'' function will return a special object to us, this object will allow us to read the lines inside the file.<br><br>As mentioned above, objects are considered special variables that can contain attributes and methods.:#You may recall that we used the '''dir() ''' function to display library information for our Python library (eg. '''dir(sys) ''' ). We This function can do the same also display other elements such as attributes and methods for our defined an object called "f". Issue the following:<source lang="python">
dir(f)
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