How do i read a text file as string in python?

I have a text file that looks like:

ABC
DEF

How can I read the file into a single-line string without newlines, in this case creating a string 'ABCDEF'?

For reading the file into a list of lines, but removing the trailing newline character from each line, see How to read a file without newlines?.

asked Dec 3, 2011 at 16:47

6

You could use:

with open('data.txt', 'r') as file:
    data = file.read().replace('\n', '')

Or if the file content is guaranteed to be one-line

with open('data.txt', 'r') as file:
    data = file.read().rstrip()

OneCricketeer

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answered Dec 3, 2011 at 17:06

sleeplessnerdsleeplessnerd

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14

In Python 3.5 or later, using pathlib you can copy text file contents into a variable and close the file in one line:

from pathlib import Path
txt = Path('data.txt').read_text()

and then you can use str.replace to remove the newlines:

txt = txt.replace('\n', '')

answered Mar 29, 2018 at 20:26

3

You can read from a file in one line:

str = open('very_Important.txt', 'r').read()

Please note that this does not close the file explicitly.

CPython will close the file when it exits as part of the garbage collection.

But other python implementations won't. To write portable code, it is better to use with or close the file explicitly. Short is not always better. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/7396043/362951

mit

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answered Dec 3, 2015 at 2:52

Nafis AhmadNafis Ahmad

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To join all lines into a string and remove new lines, I normally use :

with open('t.txt') as f:
  s = " ".join([l.rstrip("\n") for l in f]) 

answered Mar 21, 2015 at 3:10

Pedro LobitoPedro Lobito

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5

with open("data.txt") as myfile:
    data="".join(line.rstrip() for line in myfile)

join() will join a list of strings, and rstrip() with no arguments will trim whitespace, including newlines, from the end of strings.

answered Dec 3, 2011 at 16:55

MagerValpMagerValp

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0

This can be done using the read() method :

text_as_string = open('Your_Text_File.txt', 'r').read()

Or as the default mode itself is 'r' (read) so simply use,

text_as_string = open('Your_Text_File.txt').read()

answered Nov 16, 2018 at 7:16

LoochieLoochie

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I'm surprised nobody mentioned splitlines() yet.

with open ("data.txt", "r") as myfile:
    data = myfile.read().splitlines()

Variable data is now a list that looks like this when printed:

['LLKKKKKKKKMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNNNN', 'GGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEE']

Note there are no newlines (\n).

At that point, it sounds like you want to print back the lines to console, which you can achieve with a for loop:

for line in data:
    print(line)

gelonida

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answered Feb 8, 2018 at 11:59

JulianJulian

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I have fiddled around with this for a while and have prefer to use use read in combination with rstrip. Without rstrip("\n"), Python adds a newline to the end of the string, which in most cases is not very useful.

with open("myfile.txt") as f:
    file_content = f.read().rstrip("\n")
    print(file_content)

gelonida

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answered Apr 28, 2017 at 7:46

whirlwinwhirlwin

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It's hard to tell exactly what you're after, but something like this should get you started:

with open ("data.txt", "r") as myfile:
    data = ' '.join([line.replace('\n', '') for line in myfile.readlines()])

answered Dec 3, 2011 at 16:51

Chris EberleChris Eberle

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3

Try the following code:

with open("my_text_file.txt", "r") as file:
    data = file.read().replace("\n", "")

answered Mar 31 at 13:40

My CarMy Car

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you can compress this into one into two lines of code!!!

content = open('filepath','r').read().replace('\n',' ')
print(content)

if your file reads:

hello how are you?
who are you?
blank blank

python output

hello how are you? who are you? blank blank

answered Jul 30, 2018 at 20:34

1

You can also strip each line and concatenate into a final string.

myfile = open("data.txt","r")
data = ""
lines = myfile.readlines()
for line in lines:
    data = data + line.strip();

This would also work out just fine.

OrionMD

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answered Apr 26, 2015 at 5:57

2

This is a one line, copy-pasteable solution that also closes the file object:

_ = open('data.txt', 'r'); data = _.read(); _.close()

answered Aug 23, 2018 at 15:33

1

f = open('data.txt','r')
string = ""
while 1:
    line = f.readline()
    if not line:break
    string += line

f.close()


print(string)

gelonida

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answered Dec 3, 2011 at 16:49

hungneoxhungneox

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python3: Google "list comprehension" if the square bracket syntax is new to you.

 with open('data.txt') as f:
     lines = [ line.strip('\n') for line in list(f) ]

answered Nov 16, 2016 at 13:04

gerardwgerardw

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3

Oneliner:

• List: "".join([line.rstrip('\n') for line in open('file.txt')])

• Generator: "".join((line.rstrip('\n') for line in open('file.txt')))

List is faster than generator but heavier on memory. Generators are slower than lists and is lighter for memory like iterating over lines. In case of "".join(), I think both should work well. .join() function should be removed to get list or generator respectively.

• Note: close() / closing of file descriptor probably not needed

answered Aug 28, 2021 at 8:38

MachinexaMachinexa

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Have you tried this?

x = "yourfilename.txt"
y = open(x, 'r').read()

print(y)

Ali

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answered Nov 16, 2017 at 17:41

1

To remove line breaks using Python you can use replace function of a string.

This example removes all 3 types of line breaks:

my_string = open('lala.json').read()
print(my_string)

my_string = my_string.replace("\r","").replace("\n","")
print(my_string)

Example file is:

{
  "lala": "lulu",
  "foo": "bar"
}

You can try it using this replay scenario:

https://repl.it/repls/AnnualJointHardware

answered Oct 31, 2019 at 19:12

Sma MaSma Ma

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I don't feel that anyone addressed the [ ] part of your question. When you read each line into your variable, because there were multiple lines before you replaced the \n with '' you ended up creating a list. If you have a variable of x and print it out just by

x

or print(x)

or str(x)

You will see the entire list with the brackets. If you call each element of the (array of sorts)

x[0] then it omits the brackets. If you use the str() function you will see just the data and not the '' either. str(x[0])

answered Mar 6, 2015 at 20:16

Maybe you could try this? I use this in my programs.

Data= open ('data.txt', 'r')
data = Data.readlines()
for i in range(len(data)):
    data[i] = data[i].strip()+ ' '
data = ''.join(data).strip()

answered Jul 3, 2019 at 20:33

Regular expression works too:

import re
with open("depression.txt") as f:
     l = re.split(' ', re.sub('\n',' ', f.read()))[:-1]

print (l)

['I', 'feel', 'empty', 'and', 'dead', 'inside']

answered Aug 13, 2019 at 13:08

AlexAlex

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0

with open('data.txt', 'r') as file:
    data = [line.strip('\n') for line in file.readlines()]
    data = ''.join(data)

answered Jul 27, 2021 at 9:32

0

This works: Change your file to:

LLKKKKKKKKMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNNNN GGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEE

Then:

file = open("file.txt")
line = file.read()
words = line.split()

This creates a list named words that equals:

['LLKKKKKKKKMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNNNN', 'GGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEE']

That got rid of the "\n". To answer the part about the brackets getting in your way, just do this:

for word in words: # Assuming words is the list above
    print word # Prints each word in file on a different line

Or:

print words[0] + ",", words[1] # Note that the "+" symbol indicates no spaces
#The comma not in parentheses indicates a space

This returns:

LLKKKKKKKKMMMMMMMMNNNNNNNNNNNNN, GGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEE

answered May 20, 2015 at 18:34

PyGuyPyGuy

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1

with open(player_name, 'r') as myfile:
 data=myfile.readline()
 list=data.split(" ")
 word=list[0]

This code will help you to read the first line and then using the list and split option you can convert the first line word separated by space to be stored in a list.

Than you can easily access any word, or even store it in a string.

You can also do the same thing with using a for loop.

answered Jan 23, 2016 at 10:26

file = open("myfile.txt", "r")
lines = file.readlines()
str = ''                                     #string declaration

for i in range(len(lines)):
    str += lines[i].rstrip('\n') + ' '

print str

answered Jun 13, 2016 at 8:53

akDakD

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line_lst = Path("to/the/file.txt").read_text().splitlines()

Is the best way to get all the lines of a file, the '\n' are already stripped by the splitlines() (which smartly recognize win/mac/unix lines types).

But if nonetheless you want to strip each lines:

line_lst = [line.strip() for line in txt = Path("to/the/file.txt").read_text().splitlines()]

strip() was just a useful exemple, but you can process your line as you please.

At the end, you just want concatenated text ?

txt = ''.join(Path("to/the/file.txt").read_text().splitlines())

answered Mar 26 at 19:31

yotayota

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Try the following:

with open('data.txt', 'r') as myfile:
    data = myfile.read()

    sentences = data.split('\\n')
    for sentence in sentences:
        print(sentence)

Caution: It does not remove the \n. It is just for viewing the text as if there were no \n

answered Dec 6, 2019 at 6:25

Palak JainPalak Jain

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