Chapter 8 – Reading and Writing Files

Q: 1. What is a relative path relative to?

The current working directory.

Q: 2. What does an absolute path start with?

The root folder. such as / or C:\

Q: 3. What do the os.getcwd() and os.chdir() functions do?

Get current path, and change the current working directory.

Q: 4. What are the . and .. folders?

. is current folder, .. is the parent folder.

Q: 5. In C:\bacon\eggs\spam.txt, which part is the dir name, and which part is the base name?

C:\bacon\eggs is the dir name, spam.txt is the base name.

Q: 6. What are the three “mode” arguments that can be passed to the open() function?

r, w, a.

Q: 7. What happens if an existing file is opened in write mode?

Existing file will be erased and completely overwritten.

Q: 8. What is the difference between the read() and readlines() methods?

read() returns the file's entire contents as a single string. readlines() returns a list of each lines.

Q: 9. What data structure does a shelf value resemble?

dictionary.