write Python string object to file

Question

I have this block of code that reliably creates a string object. I need to write that object to a file. I can print the contents of \'data\' but I can\'t figure out how to write

Answer 1

I can print the contents of 'data' but I can't figure out how to write it to a file as output

Use with open with mode 'w' and write instead of read:

with open(template_file, "w") as a_file:
   a_file.write(data)

Also why does "with open" automatically close a_string?

open returns a File object, which implemented both __enter__ and __exit__ methods. When you enter the with block the __enter__ method is called (which opens the file) and when the with block is exited the __exit__ method is called (which closes the file).

You can implement the same behavior yourself:

class MyClass:
    def __enter__(self):
        print 'enter'
        return self

    def __exit__(self, type, value, traceback):
        print 'exit'

    def a(self):
        print 'a'

with MyClass() as my_class_obj:
     my_class_obj.a()

The output of the above code will be:

'enter'
'a'
'exit'