Reading file data in Python - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Reading file data

📖 Scenario: You have a text file that contains a list of fruits, one fruit per line. You want to read this file and work with the fruit names in your Python program.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to open a file, read its contents line by line, and print the list of fruits.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a text file named fruits.txt with the exact fruit names given.

Open the file for reading using Python.

Read all lines from the file into a list.

Print the list of fruits exactly as read from the file.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Reading data from files is common when working with logs, configuration files, or any saved information.

💼 Career

Many programming jobs require reading and processing data from files, so this skill is essential.

1

Create the fruits.txt file with fruit names

Create a text file named fruits.txt with these exact lines, each on its own line: apple, banana, cherry, date, elderberry.

Python

# Create the file fruits.txt with the fruit names
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use open with mode 'w' to write to the file. Use \n to add new lines.

2

Open the file fruits.txt for reading

Write code to open the file fruits.txt for reading and assign the file object to a variable called file.

Python

with open('fruits.txt', 'w') as file:
    file.write('apple\nbanana\ncherry\ndate\nelderberry\n')

# Open the file fruits.txt for reading and assign to variable file
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use open with mode 'r' to read the file.

3

Read all lines from the file into a list called fruits

Use the readlines() method on the file object to read all lines into a list called fruits.

Python

with open('fruits.txt', 'w') as file:
    file.write('apple\nbanana\ncherry\ndate\nelderberry\n')

file = open('fruits.txt', 'r')

# Read all lines from file into list fruits
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The readlines() method reads all lines into a list, including newline characters.

4

Print the list fruits and close the file

Print the variable fruits to display the list of fruit names. Then close the file using the close() method.

Python

with open('fruits.txt', 'w') as file:
    file.write('apple\nbanana\ncherry\ndate\nelderberry\n')

file = open('fruits.txt', 'r')
fruits = file.readlines()

# Print the list fruits and close the file
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(fruits) to show the list. Don't forget to close the file with file.close().