Python Programming with the Java™ Class Libraries: A Tutorial for Building Web and Enterprise Applications with Jython

Chapter 8. Working with Files

Terms in This Chapter

• Class instance

• Comment

• Data persistence

• Data structure

• Document string

• Dump

• File

• File object

• File pointer

• for, if, and while statements

• for loop

• Java Virtual Machine

• Method

• Mode

• newline

• Object instance

• pickle module

• Scaffolding

• try … except

• try … finally

• while loop

I've written programs that read and write data from files in Java, Delphi, Visual Basic, C++, and C. None have such a straightforward and easy approach to dealing with files as Python's. In this chapter we'll be covering file input and output, which is important for saving data. First we'll cover simple I/O; later we'll deal with persisting class instances.

Writing a program that resides only in memory is good for illustration, but eventually you'll ...