Files in Python Caution about readlines vs. read and split

You would think that lines = infile.readlines() and line = infile.read() lines = line.split(‘\n’) would give the same result in the variable lines, that is, a list of strings from the file, delimited by the newline characters.

You would be surprised! readlines() gives you a list of strings, each with a \n at the end Except! if you did not press Enter on the last line of the data file, the last string in the list will not have a \n in it read() followed by split(‘\n’) gives a list of strings, yes, but none of them will have \n in them (remember split removes the delimiters from its results)

And another surprise! If you did press Enter on the last line of the data file, readlines still works properly. The last string in the list will have a \n character just like all the others BUT the same file read with the read/split combination will have one extra entry, an empty string at the end of the list This is something you need to be aware of while processing your data – many programs crash because they assume that every string will be the same length, for example.