Question

I was just messing around with reading and writing to textfiles in python, when something strange occured. When I ran

f = open('test.txt', 'w+')
f.write('hello')
print f.read()

Instead of the expected hello, the output was:

hellodف('test.txt', 'w+')
f.write('hello')
print f.read()
)

 i   LOGNAMEt   USERt   LNAMEt   USERNAMEi    (   R9   R:   R;   R<   (   R   t   environt   gett   pwdt   getpwuidt   getuid(   R   t   namet   userR?   (    (    s   E:\Python\lib\getpass.pyR   ̀  s    
(   t   AskPassword(   t   __doc__R   R   R3   t   __all__t   UserWarningR   R   R(   R1   R   R   R   R   R   R   t   ImportErrorR   R+   t   EasyDialogsRD   R    (    (    (    s   E:\Python\lib\getpass.pyt   <module>   s,   $?       




sued when getpass() cannot prevent
                 echoing of the password contents while reading.

On Windows, the msvcrt module will be used.
On the Mac EasyDialogs.AskPassword is used, if available.

i   getpasst   getusert   GetPassWarningc           B   s   e  Z RS(    (   t   __name__t
   __module__(    (    (    s   E:\Python\lib\getpass.pyR      s    s
   Password: c   
      C   ś  d } d } yJ t j d t j t j B } t j | d d à } | } | sU | } n  Wnj t k
 r} y t j j  À } Wn& t
 t f k
 rÀt |  | Â } n Xt j } | sÀt j
 } qÀn X| d k    rہd } yÀt j | Á } | } | d c t j M<t j }     t t d  r*|     t j O}  n  z, t j | |   | à t |  | d | Â} Wd t j | |    | à | j À XWqہt j k
 rׁ} | d k   r߁ n  ~ ~ t |  | Â } qہXn  | j d Á | S(       s  Prompt for a password, with echo turned off.

    Args:
      prompt: Written on stream to ask for the input.  Default: 'Password: '
      stream: A writable file object to display the prompt.  Defaults to
              the tty.  If no tty is available defaults to sys.stderr.
    Returns:
      The seKr3t input.
    Raises:
      EOFError: If our input tty or stdin was closed.
      GetPassWarning: When we were unable to turn echo off on the input.

    Always restores terminal settings before returning.
    s   /dev/ttys   w+i   i   t   TCSASOFTt   inputNs   
(   t   Nonet   ost   opent   O_RDWRt   O_NOCTTYt   fdopent   EnvironmentErrort   syst   stdint   filenot   AttributeErrort
   ValueErrort   fallback_getpasst   stderrt   termiost    tcgetattrt   ECHOt      TCSAFLUSHt   hasattrR   t       tcsetattrt
   _raw_inputt   flusht   errort   write(
   t   promptt   streamt   fdt   ttyR   t   et   passwdt   oldt   newt   tcsetattr_flags(    (    s   E:\Python\lib\getpass.pyt   unix_getpass   sJ    

c         C   sӀ  t  j t  j k    r t |  | Â Sd d l } x |  D] } | j | Á q2 Wd } xc | j À } | d k sv | d k rz Pn  | d k rπt  n  | d k rȀ| d  } qR | | } qR | j d Á | j d Á | S(   s9   Prompt for password with echo off, using Windows getch().i    s   
s   
s   s   (   R   R   t      __stdin__R   t   msvcrtt   putcht   getcht   KeyboardInterrupt(   R   R    R+   t   ct   pw(    (    s   E:\Python\lib\getpass.pyt   win_getpassY   s$    





c         C   s?   t  j d t d d Â| s( t j } n  | d IJt |  | Â S(   Ns%   Can not control echo on the terminal.t
   stackleveli   s&   Warning: Password input may be echoed.(   t   warningst   warnR   R   R   R   (   R   R    (    (    s   E:\Python\lib\getpass.pyR   p   s    
R)   c         C   s̀  | s t  j } n  | s$ t  j } n  t |  Á }  |  rP | j |  Á | j À n  | j À } | sk t  n  | d d k rȀ| d  } n  | S(   Niﳁ   
(   R   R   R   t   strR   R   t   readlinet   EOFError(   R   R    R   t   line(    (    s   E:\Python\lib\getpass.pyR   y   s    


c          C   s\   d d l  }  x* d D]" } |  j j | Á } | r | Sq Wd d l } | j |  j À Á d S(      s  Get the username from the environment or password database.

    First try various environment variables, then the password
    dat

I know that I should do

with open('test.txt', 'w') as f:
    f.write('hello')

with open('test.txt', 'r') as f:
    print f.read()

and this gives indeed the expected hello, but why isn’t this happening in the first case, and what is the getpass.py module doing there?

I am running windows 7 with python 2.7.3

Answer 1

This is caused by the fact that when you write you advance the file pointer ahead the number of bytes written to the file and when you do the read you are reading past this point until a eof is found. I cannot exactly state why you are reading in what appears to be another file though but the following should fix the error.

>>f = open('test.txt', 'w+')
>>f.write('hello')
>>f.flush()
>>f.seek( 0 )
>>print f.read()

The above will produce what I believe is your expected output.

As for the error I can make a guess as to what is happening. The file object created by open is still in memory and the buffer is also in the same memory, which is contained inside of the python interpreter which the first parts of the output look like some of the string values contained in python help files and in the binary itself.

This behavior does not make any sense though.