Prerequisitesįor this tutorial, you should have Python 3 installed as well as a local programming environment set up on your computer.

When you’re finished with this tutorial, you’ll be able to handle any text file in Python. After a brief introduction to file formats, we’ll go through how to open, read, and write a text file in Python 3.

This tutorial will briefly describe some of the format types Python is able to handle. Regardless of your application, it is almost guaranteed that inputting or outputting data will be involved. In order to do some number crunching, you will likely have to input those numbers from a saved spreadsheet. Perhaps you are not working with text, but instead have a program that does financial analysis. Your list of users will likely be stored and saved in a text file. For this reason, it’s especially useful to know how to handle different file formats, which store different types of data.įor example, consider a Python program that checks a list of users for access control. It is likely that any program you write will involve reading, writing, or manipulating data.

Python is a great tool for processing data.