Question

I am trying to output a file’s contents to terminal using the File.read() function in Python, but keep receiving the following output which doesn’t match my “.txt” file contents.

Python Code

from sys import argv
script, input_file = argv

def print_all(f):
    print f.read

current_file = open(input_file)
print "Print File contents:\n"
print_all(current_file)
current_file.close()

Output:

Print File contents:

<built-in method read of file object at 0x1004bd470>

Answer 1

If you want to call a function, you will need () after the name of the function (along with any required arguments)

Therefore, in your function print_all replace:

print f.read    # this prints out the object reference

with:

print f.read()  # this calls the function