Saving the highscore for a game?

I recommend you use shelve. For example:

import shelve
d = shelve.open('score.txt')  # here you will save the score variable   
d['score'] = score            # thats all, now it is saved on disk.
d.close()

Next time you open your program use:

import shelve
d = shelve.open('score.txt')
score = d['score']  # the score is read from disk
d.close()

and it will be read from disk. You can use this technique to save a list of scores if you want in the same way.

You can use the pickle module to save variables to disk and then reload them.

Example:

import pickle

# load the previous score if it exists
try:
    with open('score.dat', 'rb') as file:
        score = pickle.load(file)
except:
    score = 0

print "High score: %d" % score

# your game code goes here
# let's say the user scores a new high-score of 10
score = 10;

# save the score
with open('score.dat', 'wb') as file:
    pickle.dump(score, file)

This saves a single score to disk. The nice thing about pickle is that you can easily extend it to save multiple scores - just change scores to be an array instead of a single value. pickle will save pretty much any type of variable you throw at it.

You can use a dict to hold your highscore and simply write it into a file:

def store_highscore_in_file(dictionary, fn = "./high.txt", top_n=0):
    """Store the dict into a file, only store top_n highest values."""
    with open(fn,"w") as f:
        for idx,(name,pts) in enumerate(sorted(dictionary.items(), key= lambda x:-x[1])):
            f.write(f"{name}:{pts}\n")
            if top_n and idx == top_n-1:
                break

def load_highscore_from_file(fn = "./high.txt"):
    """Retrieve dict from file"""
    hs = {}
    try:
        with open(fn,"r") as f:
            for line in f:
                name,_,points = line.partition(":")
                if name and points:
                    hs[name]=int(points)
    except FileNotFoundError:
        return {}
    return hs

Usage:

# file does not exist
k = load_highscore_from_file()
print(k)

# add some highscores to dict
k["p"]=10
k["a"]=110
k["k"]=1110
k["l"]=1022 
print(k)

# store file, only top 3
store_highscore_in_file(k, top_n=3)

# load back into new dict
kk = load_highscore_from_file()
print(kk)

Output:

{} # no file
{'p': 10, 'a': 110, 'k': 1110, 'l': 1022} # before storing top 3 
{'k': 1110, 'l': 1022, 'a': 110} # after loading the top 3 file again