Output File

[Steven Bethard]

Samantha wrote:
> input = open(r'C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Desktop\somefile.html','r')
> L = input.readlines()
> input.close
> 
> output = open(r'C:\Documents and 
> Settings\Owner\Desktop\somefile_test.html','w')
> for t in range(len(L)):
>  output.writelines(L[t])
> output.close

I think you want to do [1]:

input = open(r'somefile.html', 'r')
lst = input.readlines()
input.close() # note the () -- this is a method call

output = open(r'somefile_test.html', 'w')
output.writelines(lst) # not in a for-loop
output.close() # note the () -- this is a method call

If you really want to use a for-loop, the code should look like:

for line in L:
     output.write(line)

If you call writelines when you only want to write one line, you're 
going to get odd behavior -- Python's going to interpret each character 
in your line as a "line" itself.

> Also is there a way to test for EOF in Python?

file.read() or file.readline() will return '' if you have reached the 
end of the file.

STeVe

[1] In fact, what you really probably want to do is to take advantage of 
the fact that a file is an iterator.  You can write:

input = open(r'somefile.html', 'r')
output = open(r'somefile_test.html', 'w')
output.writelines(input)

And the lines of somefile.html will be written to somefile_test.html. 
You might also look at the shutil module.