Question

simple bit of code, just prints out a list of urls I put into a text file (it was printing them with the \n char at the end of each one though – how do I get rid of the \n?):

import mechanize, fileinput

with open('F:\Python\url_list2.txt') as urls:
    content = urls.readlines()
print content

anyway, it worked printed out the list, great. Run it again and I get this message in the python shell:

<closed file 'F:\Python\url_list2.txt', mode 'r' at 0x0000000002E4E390>

What is going on? Using windows 7 x64 if that makes any difference?

Answer 1

The with statement automatically closes the handle after all the statements inside it execute. If you need access to the handle afterwards:

import mechanize, fileinput

urls = open('F:\Python\url_list2.txt')
content = urls.readlines()
print content

If you want to get rid of the \n at the end of every line, use .strip():

import mechanize, fileinput

urls = open('F:\Python\url_list2.txt')
content = [x.strip() for x in urls.readlines()]
print content