shutil.copyfile is incomplete (truncated)

[Terry Jan Reedy]

On 4/12/2013 3:32 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Rob Schneider <rmschne at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> The close method is defined and flushing and closing a file, so
>>>
>>> it should not return until that's done.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> What command are you using to create the temp file?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> re command to write the file:
>> f=open(fn,'w')
>> ... then create HTML text in a string
>> f.write(html)
>> f.close
>
> Hold it one moment... You're not actually calling close. The file's
> still open. Is that a copy/paste problem, or is that your actual code?
>
> In Python, a function call ALWAYS has parentheses after it. Evaluating
> a function's name like that returns the function (or method) object,
> which you then do nothing with. (You could assign it someplace, for
> instance, and call it later.) Try adding empty parens:
>
> f.close()
>
> and see if that solves the problem. Alternatively, look into the
> 'with' statement and the block syntax that it can give to I/O
> operations.

I say *definitely* use a 'with' statement. Part of its purpose is to 
avoid close bugs.