[Tutor] file read and write

[Kent Johnson]

le dahut wrote:
> I noticed that it is possible to write this :
> """
> file('/tmp/myfile', 'w').write('Hello world\n')

ISTM I have had trouble with this. I always explicitly close a file that 
is open for writing.

> contnt = file('/tmp/sourcefile').read()

I use this often but never in any kind of loop where multiple files are 
being read.

Note that the behaviour of the garbage collector is 
implementation-dependent. It is an implementation detail of CPython that 
GC is implemented with reference counting and objects are disposed when 
there are no longer any references to them. Jython uses Java's GC which 
does not behave the same way; PyPy and IronPython may have different GC 
as well.

So if you want your code to be portable between implementations of 
Python you should not rely on this behaviour.

Kent