When should I ever use file.read() or file.readlines()?

Question

I noticed that if I iterate over a file that I opened, it is much faster to iterate over it without \"read\"-ing it.

i.e.

l = open(\'file\',\'r\')
         


        

Answer 1

Hope this helps!

https://docs.python.org/2/tutorial/inputoutput.html#methods-of-file-objects

When size is omitted or negative, the entire contents of the file will be read and returned; it’s your problem if the file is twice as large as your machine’s memory

Sorry for all the edits!

For reading lines from a file, you can loop over the file object. This is memory efficient, fast, and leads to simple code:

for line in f:
    print line,

This is the first line of the file.
Second line of the file