Python File Slurp

This will slurp the content into a single string in Python 2.6¹ and above:

with open('x.txt') as x: f = x.read()

And this will create a list of lines:

with open('x.txt') as x: f = x.readlines()

These approaches guarantee immediate closure of the input file right after the reading.

Footnote:

1. This approach can also be used in Python 2.5 using from __future__ import with_statement.

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An older approach that does not guarantee immediate closure is to use this to create a single string:

f = open('x.txt').read()

And this to create a list of lines:

f = open('x.txt').readlines()

In practice it will be immediately closed in some versions of CPython, but closed "only when the garbage collector gets around to it" in Jython, IronPython, and probably some future version of CPython.

Starting in Python 3.5, you can use the pathlib module for a more modern interface. Being Python 3, it makes a distinction between reading text and reading bytes:

from pathlib import Path

text_string = Path('x.txt').read_text()  # type: str

byte_string = Path('x.txt').read_bytes()  # type: bytes