Help with Python

1

Okay, so I’m going through Zed Shaw’s program, and I am trying to create a file, then open it. I succeeded in doing the exercise, but I can’t get the study drill. This is the exercise:

from sys import argv

script, filename = argv

print “We’re going to erase %r.” % filename
print "If you don’t want that, hit CTRL-C (C^)."
print “If you do want that, hit RETURN.”

raw_input("?")

print "Opening the file…"
target = open(filename, ‘w’)

print "Truncating the file. Goodbye!"
target.truncate()

print “Now I’m going to ask you for three lines.”

line1 = raw_input("line 1: ")
line2 = raw_input("line 2: ")
line3 = raw_input("line 3: ")

print “I’m going to write these to the file.”

target.write(line1)
target.write("\n")
target.write(line2)
target.write("\n")
target.write(line3)
target.write("\n")

print "And finally, we close it."
target.close

From this, I’m supposed to create a way to open the file from within the script, but I can’t seem to figure out how to do this. I feel that I understand what every line is doing, but I am about ready to give up on this drill.

2

Do I need to re-import the arguments? I tried that, but obviously not correctly:

from sys import argv

script, filename = argv

txt = open(filename)

print txt.read()

That didn’t work, so I tried this:

file_again = raw_input("> ")

txt_again = open(file_again)

print txt_again.read()

Sorry, but the problem is that I don’t understand what I don’t understand. I feel that I get every single line, but I don’t get what’s not working.

3

Look up the official documentation for python I/O. It’s not even clear what you want to do here.

4

Do you execute the Script with a commandline argument like

python yourscript.py somefilename

5

Yes, I did. I finally found an answer. Sorry, I’m getting used to this stuff.