Copying from one text file to another using Python

Question

I would like to copy certain lines of text from one text file to another. In my current script when I search for a string it copies everything afterwards, how can I copy just a certain part of the text? E.g. only copy lines when it has "tests/file/myword" in it?

current code:

#!/usr/bin/env python
f = open('list1.txt')
f1 = open('output.txt', 'a')

doIHaveToCopyTheLine=False

for line in f.readlines():

    if 'tests/file/myword' in line:
        doIHaveToCopyTheLine=True

    if doIHaveToCopyTheLine:
        f1.write(line)

f1.close()
f.close()

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15343743/copying-from-one-text-file-to-another-using-python

Answer 1

The oneliner:

open("out1.txt", "w").writelines([l for l in open("in.txt").readlines() if "tests/file/myword" in l])

Recommended with with:

with open("in.txt") as f:
    lines = f.readlines()
    lines = [l for l in lines if "ROW" in l]
    with open("out.txt", "w") as f1:
        f1.writelines(lines)

Using less memory:

with open("in.txt") as f:
    with open("out.txt", "w") as f1:
        for line in f:
            if "ROW" in line:
                f1.write(line)