Easiest way to read/write a file's content in Python

Question

In Ruby you can read from a file using s = File.read(filename). The shortest and clearest I know in Python is

with open(filename) as f:
    s =          


        

Answer 1

If you're open to using libraries, try installing forked-path (with either easy_install or pip).

Then you can do:

from path import path
s = path(filename).bytes()

This library is fairly new, but it's a fork of a library that's been floating around Python for years and has been used quite a bit. Since I found this library years ago, I very seldom use os.path or open() any more.