How to Read File to a String in Python

1. Use the read() Method to Read a Text File to a String in Python
2. Use the pathlib.read_text() Function to Read a Text File to a String in Python
3. Use the join() Function to Read a Text File to a String in Python

In Python, we have built-in functions that can handle different file operations on different file types. A text file contains a sequence of strings in which every line terminated using a newline character \n.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to read a text file into a string in Python.

Use the read() Method to Read a Text File to a String in Python

The read() method of the file object allows us to read all the content from a text file all at once. First, we will create a file-object and open the required text file in reading mode using the open() function. Then we will use the read() function with this file-object to read all text into a string and print it as shown below.

with open("sample.txt") as f:
    content = f.read()

print(content)

Output:

sample line 1\n sample line 2\n sample line 3\n

When we read a file, it reads the newline character \n as well. We can remove this character using the replace() function. This function will replace all newline characters from the string with a specified character in the function.

For example,

with open("sample.txt") as f:
    content = f.read().replace("\n", " ")

print(content)

Output:

sample line 1 sample line 2 sample line 3

Use the pathlib.read_text() Function to Read a Text File to a String in Python

The pathlib module is added to Python 3.4 and has more efficient methods available for file-handling and system paths. The read_text() function from this module can read a text file and close it in the same line. The following code shows this.

from pathlib import Path

content = Path("sample.txt").read_text().replace("\n", " ")
print(content)

Output:

sample line 1 sample line 2 sample line 3

Use the join() Function to Read a Text File to a String in Python

The join() method allows us to join different iterables in Python. We can read a text file into a string using this function also. For this, we will read everything using the file-object and then use the list comprehension method and combine them using the join() function. The code below implements this.

with open("sample.txt") as f:
    content = " ".join([l.rstrip() for l in f])
print(content)

Output:

sample line 1 sample line 2 sample line 3

The rstrip() function here removes any trailing characters from the line.