Sorta noob question - file vs. open?

[Jason Drew]

Both your code snippets above work should work OK. If it seems like a
file isn't being written, maybe you should specify its full path so you
are sure about where to check for it.

On the file-or-open question, the Python docs state, "The intent is for
open() to continue to be preferred for use as a factory function which
returns a new file object."

I happen to know that because it was clarified for me recently by a few
posters in this informative thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/thread/fbc7fbacf0866763
(which didn't start out as a file-or-open discussion, but there you
go).

Hope this helps,
Jason