On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 10:05 PM, BartC <b...@freeuk.com> wrote: > But out of interest, how would /you/ write a function that takes a file-spec > and turns it into an in-memory string? And what would its use look like?
def read_file(fn, *a, **kw): with open(fn, *a, **kw) as f: return f.read() Usage: script = read_file(".bashrc") data = read_file("Ellalune_AlicePortrait.jpg", "rb") decoded = read_file("greek.srt", encoding="ISO-8859-7") If there's any problem with reading the file, an exception will be raised. Also, thanks to the 'with' block, I'm guaranteed that the file will have been closed before read_file() returns, which means I can immediately go and write to the file without a conflict. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list