python - f.read coming up empty

Question

I'm doing all this in the interpreter..

loc1 = '/council/council1'
file1 = open(loc1, 'r')

at this point i can do file1.read() and it prints the file's contents as a string to standard output

but if i add this..

string1 = file1.read()

string 1 comes back empty.. i have no idea what i could be doing wrong. this seems like the most basic thing!

if I go on to type file1.read() again, the output to standard output is just an empty string. so, somehow i am losing my file when i try to create a string with file1.read()

Answer 1

You can only read a file once. After that, the current read-position is at the end of the file.

If you add file1.seek(0) before you re-read it, you should be able to read the contents again. A better approach, however, is to read into a string the first time and then keep it in memory:

loc1 = '/council/council1'
file1 = open(loc1, 'r')
string1 = file1.read()
print string1