CHAPTER - FIVE

Python File Handling

&
Exception Handling

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 Data File Handling
 We have seen yet only the transient programs. The programs which
run for a short period of time and give some output and after that
their data is disappeared. And when we again run those programs
then we have to use new data.
 This is because the data is entered in primary memory which is
temporary memory and its data is volatile.
 Those programs which are persistent i.e. they are always in
running or run for a long time then their data is stored in
permanent storage (e.g. harddisk) . If the program is closed or
restarted then the data used will be retrieved.
 For this purpose the program should have the capability to read or
write the text files or data files. These files can be saved in
permanent storage.
 The meaning of File I/O (input-output)
(Program Random Access is to transfer the data from
Memory) Hard
Primary
User memory to secondary memory and vice-versa. Disk
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 Why the Files are used?
 The data stored with in a file is known as persistent data because this
data is permanently stored in the system.
 Python provides reading and writing capability of data files.
 We save the data in the files for further use.
 As you save your data in files using word, excel etc. same thing we can
do with python.
 “A File is a collection of characters in which we can perform read and
write functions. And also we can save it in secondary storage.”

Write to file
(Save)
Python External File
Program (Secondary
Storage)

Read from
file
(Load)
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 Data File Operations
Following main operations can be done on files -
1. Opening a file
2. Performing operations
1. READ
2. WRITE etc.
3. Closing The File

Open Process Close

File Data File
Beside above operations there are some more operations can be done on
files.-
 Creating of Files
 Traversing of Data
 Appending Data into file.
 Inserting Data into File.
 Deleting Data from File.
 Copying of File.
 Updating Data into File.
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 File Types
File are of two types –

1. Text File: A text file is sequence of line and line is the sequence of characters
and this file is saved in a permanent storage device.
 Although in python default character coding is ASCII but by using
constant ‘U’ this can be converted into UNICODE.
 In Text File each line terminates with a special character which is
EOL (End Of Line). These are in human readable form and these can
be created using any text editor.

2. Binary File: Binary files are used to store binary data such as images, videos
audio etc. Generally numbers are stored in binary files.
 In binary file, there is no delimiter to end a line. Since they are
directly in the form of binary hence there is no need to translate them.
 That’s why these files are easy and fast in working. 5
 Opening & Closing Files
 We need a file variable or file handle to work with files in Python.
 This file object can be created by using open( ) function or file( ) function.
 Open( ) function creates a file object, which is used later to access the file using
the functions related to file manipulation.
 Its syntax is following -
 <file_object>=open(<file_name>,<access_mode>)
 File accessing modes -
– read(r): To read the file
– write(w): to write to the file
Python External
– append(a): to Write at the end of file.
Program File
(Seconda
ry
Storage)
Read from
file
(Load)
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 File Handling

 File opening fileObject = open(file_name [, access_mode][, buffering])

Common access modes:

 “r” opens a file for reading only.
 “w” opens a file for writing only. Overwrites the file if the file exists. Otherwise,
it creates a new file.
 “a” opens a file for appending. If the file does not exist, it creates a new file for
writing.

 Closing a file fileObject.close()

The close() method flushes any unwritten information and closes the file object.

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 File Modes
Mode Description
r To read the file which is already existing.
rb Read Only in binary format.
r+ To Read and write but the file pointer will be at the beginning of the file.
rb+ To Read and write binary file. But the file pointer will be at the beginning of the file.

w Only writing mode, if file is existing the old file will be overwritten else the new file will be
created.
wb Binary file only in writing mode, if file is existing the old file will be overwritten else the new
file will be created.
wb+ Binary file only in reading and writing mode, if file is existing the old file will be
overwritten else the new file will be created.
a Append mode. The file pointer will be at the end of the file.
ab Append mode in binary file. The file pointer will be at the end of the file.
a+ Appending and reading if the file is existing then file pointer will be at the end of the file else
new file will be created for reading and writing.
ab+ Appending and reading in binary file if the file is existing then file pointer will be at the end
of the file else new file will be created for reading and writing. 8
 File Handling

 Reading a file fileObject.read([count])

 The read() method reads the whole file at once.
 The readline() method reads one line each time from the file.
 The readlines() method reads all lines from the file in a list.

 Writing in a file fileObject.write(string)

The write() method writes any string to an open file.

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Functions Used for File Handling

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 File Handling
 Python has several built-in modules and functions for handling files
 Reading and writing data to files using Python is pretty straightforward.
 To do this, you must first open files in the appropriate mode.
 Here’s an example of how to use Python’s “with open(…) as …” pattern
to open a text file and read its contents:
with open('data.txt', 'r') as f:
data = f.read()
 open() takes a filename and a mode as its arguments. r opens the file in
read only mode.
 To write data to a file, pass in w as an argument instead:
with open('data.txt', 'w') as f:
data = 'some data to be written to the file'
f.write(data)
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 Opening & Closing
Files. . . Opened the File
Here the point is that the file “Hello.txt” which is used here is pre built
and stored in the same folder where Python is installed.

The file is closed.

A program describing the functions of file handling.

Output

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Reading a File

A Program to read
“Hello.txt” File.

Output

Hello.txt file was created

using notepad.|

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 Reading a File . . .
Reading first 10
characters from the
file “Hello.txt”

Output

1. We can also use readline( ) function which can read one line at a
time from the file.
2. Same readlines( ) function is used to read many lines.

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 Writing to a
• We can write characters into file by using following two methods -
1. write (string) File
2. writelines (sequence of lines)
• write( ) : it takes a sting as argument and adds to the file. We have to use
‘\n’ in string for end of line character .
• writelines ( ) : if we want to write list, tupleinto the file then we use
writelines ( ) function.
A program to write in
“Hello.txt”

This “Hello.txt” is created using above

program.

Output

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 Writing to a
File. . .

A Program to use writelines()

function

Output

“Hello.txt” File is
created using the
above program.

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 Writing to a
File.
Hello.txt file is opened using “with”.

Output

“Hello.txt” File is
created using the
above program.

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 Appending in a
•
File
Append means adding something new to existing file.
• ‘a’ mode is used to accomplish this task. It means opening a file in
write mode and if file is existing then adding data to the end of the
file.
A program to append
into a file “Hello.Txt”

Output

A new data is appended into

Hello.txt by above program.

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 Writing User Input to the
File.
Taking the data from
user and writing
data to this the
file nt.txt”.
“Stude
Student File is
created by using
the above
Output program.

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 Operations in Binary
•
File.
If we want to write structure such as list, dictionary etc and also we
want to read it then we have to use a module in python known as
pickle.
• Pickling means converting structure into byte stream before
writing the data into file.
• And when we read a file then a opposite operation is to be
done means unpickling.
• Pickle module has two methods - dump( ) to write and load( ) to read.

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 Tkinter filedialog

 Python Tkinter (and TK) offer a set of dialogs that you can use when
working with files. By using these you don’t have to design standard dialogs
your self.
 Example dialogs include an open file dialog, a save file dialog and many
others.
 Besides file dialogs there are other standard dialogs, but in this article we
will focus on file dialogs.
 File dialogs help you open, save files or directories.
 This is the type of dialog you get when you click file, open.
 This dialog comes out of the module, there’s no need to write all the code
manually.
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 Exception Handling
 Exceptions are the unusual event that occurs during the execution of the program
that interrupts the normal flow of the program.
 Generally, exceptions occur when the code written encounters a situation it cannot
cope with.
 Whenever an exception is raised, the program stops the execution, and thus the
further code is not executed.
 Therefore, an exception is a python object that represents a run-time error. An
exception is a Python object that represents an error.
 These exceptions are processed using Four statements. These are:
1) try/except: catch the error and recover from exceptions hoist by
programmers or Python itself.
2) try/finally: Whether exception occurs or not, it automatically performs the
clean-up action.
3) assert: triggers an exception conditionally in the code.
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4) raise: manually triggers an exception in the code.
 Role of Exception Handling
 Error handling: The exceptions get raised whenever Python detects an error in a
program at runtime.
o As a programmer, if you don't want the default behavior, then code a 'try'
statement to catch and recover the program from an exception.
o Python will jump to the 'try' handler when the program detects an error; the
execution will be resumed.
 Event Notification: Exceptions are also used to signal suitable conditions & then
passing result flags around a program and text them explicitly.
 Terminate Execution: There may arise some problems or errors in programs that it
needs a termination.
o So try/finally is used that guarantees that closing-time operation will be
performed. The 'with' statement offers an alternative for objects that support
it.
 Exotic flow of Control: Programmers can also use exceptions as a basis for
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implementing unusual control flow. Since there is no 'go to' statement in Python so that
 Exception Handling
 Common Exceptions in Python:
NameError - TypeError - IndexError - KeyError - Exception
 Exception Handling Syntax:

 An empty except statement can catch any exception.

 finally clause: always executed before finishing try statements.

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EXCEPTION NAME DESCRIPTION
Exception Base class for all exceptions
Raised when the next() method of an
StopIteration
iterator does not point to any object.
SystemExit Raised by the sys.exit() function.
Base class for all built-in exceptions except
StandardError
StopIteration and SystemExit.
Base class for all errors that occur for
ArithmeticError
numeric
calculation.
Raised when a calculation exceeds
OverflowError
maximum limit for a numeric type.
FloatingPointError Raised when a floating point calculation fails.
Raised when division or modulo by zero
ZeroDivisionError
takes place for all numeric types.

AssertionError Raised in case of failure of the Assert

statement. 25
 Raised when an input/ output operation fails, such as the print statement or the
IOError
open() function when trying to open a file that does not exist.
IOError
Raised for operating system-related errors.
SyntaxError Raised when there is an error in Python syntax.
IndentationError Raised when indentation is not specified properly.
Raised when the interpreter finds an internal problem, but when this
SystemError
error is encountered the Python interpreter does not exit.

Raised when Python interpreter is quit by using the sys.exit() function. If not
SystemExit
handled in the code, causes the interpreter to exit.
Raised when an operation or function is attempted that is invalid for the specified
TypeError
data type.
Raised when the built-in function for a data type has the valid type of arguments,
ValueError
but the arguments have invalid values specified.

RuntimeError Raised when a generated error does not fall into any category.

Raised when an abstract method that needs to be implemented in an inherited

NotImplementedError
class is not actually implemented.

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 Quiz 5%

1) Write a Python program to read a file line by line and store it into a list.
2) Define two functions which, respectively, input values for the elements of lists
of reals and output the list elements:
3) Write a function in python to read the content from a text file “file.txt" line by
line and display the same on screen.
4) Write a function display_words() in python to read lines from a text file
"story.txt", and display those words, which are less than 4 characters.
5) Write a function in python to read the content from a text file "software.txt"
line by line and display the same on screen.
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