How do I print the content of a .txt file in Python?

Opening a file in python for reading is easy:

f = open('example.txt', 'r')

To get everything in the file, just use read()

file_contents = f.read()

And to print the contents, just do:

print (file_contents)

Don't forget to close the file when you're done.

f.close()

How to read and print the content of a txt file

Assume you got a file called file.txt that you want to read in a program and the content is this:

this is the content of the file
with open you can read it and
then with a loop you can print it
on the screen. Using enconding='utf-8'
you avoid some strange convertions of
caracters. With strip(), you avoid printing
an empty line between each (not empty) line

You can read this content: write the following script in notepad:

with open("file.txt", "r", encoding="utf-8") as file:
    for line in file:
        print(line.strip())

save it as readfile.py for example, in the same folder of the txt file.

Then you run it (shift + right click of the mouse and select the prompt from the contextual menu) writing in the prompt:

C:\examples> python readfile.py

You should get this. Play attention to the word, they have to be written just as you see them and to the indentation. It is important in python. Use always the same indentation in each file (4 spaces are good).

output

this is the content of the file
with open you can read it and
then with a loop you can print it
on the screen. Using enconding='utf-8'
you avoid some strange convertions of
caracters. With strip(), you avoid printing
an empty line between each (not empty) line

Just do this:

>>> with open("path/to/file") as f: # The with keyword automatically closes the file when you are done
...     print f.read()

This will print the file in the terminal.

with open("filename.txt", "w+") as file:
  for line in file:
    print line

This with statement automatically opens and closes it for you and you can iterate over the lines of the file with a simple for loop