On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:44:17 +0000, Andrea Crotti wrote: > I normally didn't bother too much when reading from files, and for > example I always did a > > content = open(filename).readlines() > > But now I have the doubt that it's not a good idea, does the file > handler stays open until the interpreter quits?
The file will stay open until: 1) you explicitly close it; 2) the reference to the open file goes out of scope and is garbage collected; or 3) the Python environment shuts down whichever happens first. In the case of #2, the timing is a matter of implementation detail. CPython and PyPy currently close the file immediately the last reference to it goes out of scope (but that's not a promise of the language, so it could change in the future); Jython and IronPython will eventually close the file, but it may take a long time. Except for the quickest and dirtiest scripts, I recommend always using either the "with file as" idiom, or explicitly closing the file. -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
