Question

By definition, “a+” mode opens the file for both appending and reading. Appending works, but what is the method for reading? I did some searches, but couldn’t find it clarified anywhere.

f=open("myfile.txt","a+")
print (f.read())

Tried this, it prints blank.

Answer 1

Use f.seek() to set the file offset to the beginning of the file.

Note: Before Python 2.7, there was a bug that would cause some operating systems to not have the file position always point to the end of the file. This could cause some users to have your original code work. For example, on CentOS 6 your code would have worked as you wanted, but not as it should.

f = open("myfile.txt","a+")
f.seek(0)
print f.read()