Read The Whole File At Once

I'm trying to write a function that gets a path and returns this file's content. No error handling needed. I've came up with the following def read_all_1(path): f = open(path)

Solution 1:

They are both quite pythonic. To address your second question, in the second function, the file will indeed be closed automatically. That is part of the protocol used with the with statement. Ironically, the file is not guaranteed to be closed in your first example (more on why in a second).

Ultimately, I would choose to use the with statement, and here's why - according to PEP 343:

with EXPR as VAR:
    BLOCK

Is translated into:

mgr = (EXPR)
exit = type(mgr).__exit__  # Not calling it yet
value = type(mgr).__enter__(mgr)
exc = Truetry:
    try:
        VAR = value  # Only if "as VAR" is present
        BLOCK
    except:
        # The exceptional case is handled here
        exc = Falseifnot exit(mgr, *sys.exc_info()):
            raise# The exception is swallowed if exit() returns truefinally:
    # The normal and non-local-goto cases are handled hereif exc:
        exit(mgr, None, None, None)

As you can see, you get a lot of protection in this case - your file is guaranteed to be closed no matter what happens in the intervening code. This also really helps for readability; imagine if you had to put this huge block of code every time you wanted to open a file!

Solution 2:

I will say the second one , and yes the file will be closed, think of the with statement like this:

try:
   f = open(filepath)
   <code>
finally:
   f.close()

About your third question no there is no other way that don't involve opening the file.

---

A third way can be (without explicitly closing the file):

open(filepath).read()

The file will be closed when the file object will be garbage collected, but IMHO explicit is better than implicit.