Question

I keep getting this “writing to a closed file error” while trying to compile the following code:

fout = open('markov_output.txt', 'w')  

for i in range( MAXGEN ) :
            # get our hands on the list
    key = (w1,w2)
    sufList = table[key]
            # choose a suffix from the list
    suf = random.choice( sufList )

    if suf == NONWORD :     # caught our "end story" marker.  Get out
            if len( line ) > 0 :
                    fout.write(line)
            break
    if len( line ) + len( suf ) > MAX_LINE_LEN :
            fout.write(line)
            line = ""
    line = line + " " + suf

    w1, w2 = w2, suf
    fout.close()

Answer 1

Don’t you want the fout.close() outside the loop??

You might want to consider using with if you have Python 2.5 or newer:

with open('markov_output.txt', 'w') as fout:
    # Your code to write to the file here

That will automatically close the file when you’re done, as well as if any exceptions occur.