python - Writing to a file in a for loop

Question

text_file = open("new.txt", "r")
lines = text_file.readlines()

for line in lines:
        var1, var2 = line.split(",");
        myfile = open('xyz.txt', 'w')
        myfile.writelines(var1)
        myfile.close()

text_file.close()

I have 10 lines of text in new.txt like Adam:8154, George:5234, and so on. Now I want a text file which contains only the names. xyz.txt must contain Adam, George, and so on. The above code leaves me with the 10th name only.

How to have all the 10 names in a single text file?

Answer 1

That is because you are opening , writing and closing the file 10 times inside your for loop

myfile = open('xyz.txt', 'w')
myfile.writelines(var1)
myfile.close()

You should open and close your file outside for loop.

myfile = open('xyz.txt', 'w')
for line in lines:
    var1, var2 = line.split(",");
    myfile.write("%s
" % var1)

myfile.close()
text_file.close()

You should also notice to use write and not writelines.

writelines writes a list of lines to your file.

Also you should check out the answers posted by folks here that uses with statement. That is the elegant way to do file read/write operations in Python