How to check for EOF in a text file

[nemooo]

Hi...This is my first post....I am a newbie to python programming and I have started a program that uses file handling....My problem is that despite the fact that other programming languages (pascal lets say) has an EOF command python doesnt...

My code is something like that:

for i in range (99):                     # this is just an example
                fin.open("text" , "r+")
                fin.seek(i)
                text=fin.read(1)
                fin.close()
                print fin
i=i+1

The problem is that the file is a document and I need to read every letter individually and stop reading at the end of the document.....Any ideas?
((Sry if this sound a little bit newbish but i am completely new to that stuff))

[bartonc]

Hi...This is my first post....I am a newbie to python programming and I have started a program that uses file handling....My problem is that despite the fact that other programming languages (pascal lets say) has an EOF command python doesnt...

My code is something like that:

for i in range (99):                     # this is just an example
                fin.open("text" , "r+")
                fin.seek(i)
                text=fin.read(1)
                fin.close()
                print fin
i=i+1

The problem is that the file is a document and I need to read every letter individually and stop reading at the end of the document.....Any ideas?
((Sry if this sound a little bit newbish but i am completely new to that stuff))

We generally don't use read() very often in Python. Files are much easier to handle by iterating over them as if they are lists. The docs that that read() retruns and empty string when EOF is encountered:

read( [size])

Read at most size bytes from the file (less if the read hits EOF before obtaining size bytes). If the size argument is negative or omitted, read all data until EOF is reached. The bytes are returned as a string object. An empty string is returned when EOF is encountered immediately.

So:

f = open(r'D:\My Documents\Python\TheScripts examples\temp.txt')
while True:
    c = f.read(1)
    if not c:
        break
    print c,
 
f.close()
 
t e s t i n g

[Smygis]

I wuld do it.

for c in open("testfile").read():
    print c,
 

The problem is that the file is a document and I need to read every letter individually and stop reading at the end of the document.....Any ideas?
((Sry if this sound a little bit newbish but i am completely new to that stuff))

Its way better to read in the whole file at once and then process it.

[bartonc]

I wuld do it.

for c in open("testfile").read():
    print c,
 

Its way better to read in the whole file at once and then process it.

That's true of small files. On large files you may only get a buffer's worth on a single read().