Question

There are at least two ways to write to a file in python:

f = open(file, 'w')
f.write(string)

or

f = open(file, 'w')
print >> f, string     # in python 2
print(string, file=f)  # in python 3

Is there a difference between the two? Or is any one more Pythonic? I’m trying to write a bunch of HTML to file so I need a bunch of write/print statements through my file(but I don’t need a templating engine).

Answer 1

print does things file.write doesn’t, allowing you to skip string formatting for some basic things.

It inserts spaces between arguments and appends the line terminator.

print "a", "b" # prints something like "a b\n"

It calls the __str__ or __repr__ special methods of an object to convert it to a string.

print 1 # prints something like "1\n"

You would have to manually do these things if you used file.write instead of print.