Files Preparation

Overview

Python is a fantastic language for processing data files and is frequently used in other disciplines for that exact purpose. Today is focused on how to work with text files.

Basic Learning Objectives

Before class, you should be able to:

• Open, read from, and write to a text file in Python
• Define csv format

Advanced Learning Objectives

After class, you should be able to:

• Use the read, readline, and readlines methods appropriately
• Solve problems that involve analyzing the content of files
• Solve problems that involve writing to files

Resources

You should read/watch the following:

• 11.1 Working with Data Files
• 11.2 Reading a File
• 11.3 Alternative File Reading Methods
• 11.4 Iterating over lines in a file
• 11.8 Writing Text Files
• 11.9 CSV Format
• 11.10 Reading in data from a CSV File

Checks

Submit answers to the following on Moodle:

1. Checkpoint 11.3.3: Provide code to find the number of characters in a file school_prompt2.txt and assign that value to the variable num_char.
2. Checkpoint 11.4.1: Provide code to find out how many lines are in a file emotion_words.txt. Save this value to the variable num_lines. Do not use the len method.
3. What is some data that you’d like to be able to process with Python?