Question

I was curious if this causes any bad behaviors. I ran a test case and got no errors so I assume its OK (although probably not good practice). Just wanted to know how python deals with the issue I assumed should have existed?

with open("somefile.txt","r") as fileinfo:
    fileinfo = fileinfo.readlines()

print fileinfo

I thought overwritting “fileinfo” would cause issues exiting the with statement (raise some error about not being able to .close() a list). Does the with statement retain a local copy of the file reference? Thanks!

Answer 1

Of course Python retains an internal reference to the object used in the with statement. Otherwise how would it work when you don’t use the as clause?