Question

For the following Python code:

fp = open('output.txt', 'wb')
# Very big file, writes a lot of lines, n is a very large number
for i in range(1, n):
    fp.write('something' * n)
fp.close()

The writing process above can last more than 30 min. Sometimes I get the error MemoryError. Is the content of the file before closing stored in memory or written in a temp file? If it’s in a temporary file, what is its general location on a Linux OS?

Edit:

Added fp.write in a for loop

Answer 1

It’s stored in the operating system’s disk cache in memory until it is flushed to disk, either implicitly due to timing or space issues, or explicitly via fp.flush().