Question

When reading a txt file in windows by python, carriage characoters are lost in resulted string.

c:/text.txt

aaa\r\nbbb\r\nccc\r\nddd

code:

input = open('c:/text.txt')
str = input.read()
import repr
for i,ch in enumerate(str):
    print i,ord(ch),repr.repr(ch)

result:

0 97 'a'
1 97 'a'
2 97 'a'
3 10 '\n'
4 98 'b'
5 98 'b'
6 98 'b'
7 10 '\n'
8 99 'c'
9 99 'c'
10 99 'c'
11 10 '\n'
12 100 'd'
13 100 'd'
14 100 'd'

you can see that all carriage characters are lost.
Any suggestion appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

If you open the file in text mode, Windows line endings \r\n are automatically substituted by standard line endings \n. To prevent this from happening, open the file in binary mode:

input = open('c:/text.txt', 'rb')