Reading a file into a list in Python

In an earlier article we have seen how to check if the file exists or not. Now we will see how to open the file, read the contents to a list variable with a line per list item. Reading a file into a list is quiet simple in python. You have to use the open() built-in function and the readlines() function. Here is an example.

from pathlib import Path

file = Path("samples/app.log")

if file.is_file():
    file_content_list = open(file).readlines()
    print("\n", file_content_list)
else:
    print("\nFile does not xists.\n")

In the above example, each and every item of the list will have the ending line break (\n). To remove this, use [item.rstrip(“\n”) for item in file_content_list]. Here is the sample with line break symbol removal code.

from pathlib import Path

file = Path("samples/app.log")

if file.is_file():
    file_content_list = open(file).readlines()
    file_content_list = [item.rstrip("\n") for item in file_content_list]
    print("\n", file_content_list)
else:
    print("\nFile does not xists.\n")

You may also like to read about importing a CSV file to a variable in Python.

Reference

• More about the in-built open() function at Python docs.