Python create file with path

Create File in Python

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a file in Python.

Python is widely used in data analytics and comes with some inbuilt functions to work with files. We can create a file and do different operations, such as write a file and read a file using Python.

After reading this tutorial, you’ll learn: –

• Create a file in the current directory or a specified directory
• Create a file if not exists
• Create a file with a date and time as its name
• Create a file with permissions

Table of contents

Create A Empty Text File

We don’t have to import any module to create a new file. We can create a file using the built-in function open() .

open('file_Path', 'access_mode')

Pass the file name and access mode to the open() function to create a file. Access mode specifies the purpose of opening a file.

Below is the list of access modes for creating an a file.

• The file is created in the same directory where our program/script is running.
• If you have not specified any specific path(directory location), the file is created in the working directory. It is known as creating a file using the relative path. A relative path contains the current directory and then the file name.

You can verify the result using the following four approaches

1. If the script executed without an error or exception
2. By checking the working directory manually to look for a new file
3. Use the os.listdir(directory_path) function to list all files from a folder before and after creating a file
4. Use the os.path.isfile(file_path) function to verify if a newly created file exists in a directory.

Let’s verify our operation result.

import os # list files from a working directory print(os.listdir()) # verify file exist print(os.path.isfile('sales.txt'))

['sample.txt', 'sales.txt', 'sales_2.txt'] True

Create File In A Specific Directory

To create a file inside a specific directory, we need to open a file using the absolute path. An absolute path contains the entire path to the file or directory that we need to use.

It includes the complete directory list required to locate the file. For example, /user/Pynative/data/sales.txt is an absolute path to discover the sales.txt . All of the information needed to find the file is contained in the path string.

Let’s see the example to create a file for writing using the absolute path.

# create a text file for writing with open(r'E:\pynative\reports\profit.txt', 'w') as fp: fp.write('This is first line') pass 

Note: Using the with statement a file is closed automatically it ensures that all the resources that are tied up with the file are released.

Let’s verify result using the absolute path.

import os # list files a directory print(os.listdir(r'E:\pynative\reports')) # output ['sample.txt', 'sales.txt', 'sales_2.txt' 'profit.txt'] # verify file exist print(os.path.isfile(r'E:\pynative\reports\profit.txt')) # output True

Also, you can join directory path and file name to create file at the specified location.

If you have a directory path and file name in two variables, use the os.path.join() function to construct a full path. This function accepts the directory path and file name as arguments and constructs an absolute path to create a file.

import os # Specify the directory path path = r'E:\pynative\account' file_name = 'revenue.txt' # Creating a file at specified folder # join directory and file path with open(os.path.join(path, file_name), 'w') as fp: # uncomment below line if you want to create an empty file fp.write('This is a new line')

Create a File If Not Exists

Sometimes it is essential not to create a new file if a file with the same name already exists in a given path. By default, when you open a file in write mode, it overwrites it if it exists. Else, create the new one.

We can create a file only if it is not present using the following two ways:

• Use os.path.exists(«file_path») function to check if a file exists.
• Use the access mode x in the open() function and exception handling.

Example 1: create file if not exists.

import os file_path = r'E:\pynative\account\profit.txt' if os.path.exists(file_path): print('file already exists') else: # create a file with open(file_path, 'w') as fp: # uncomment if you want empty file fp.write('This is first line')

Example 2: Use file access mode x

The access mode x open a file for exclusive creation. If the file already exists, this operation fails with FileExistsError . Use try-except block to handle this error.

try: file_path = r'E:\pynative\account\profit.txt' # create file with open(file_path, 'x') as fp: pass except: print('File already exists') 

Create File with a DateTime

Let’s see how to create a text file with the current date as its name. Use the datetime module to get the current date and time and assign it to the file name to create a file with the date and time in its name.

• Python provides a datetime module that has several classes to access and manipulate the date and timestamp value.
• First, get the current datetime value
• Next, we need to format datetime into a string to use it as a file name.
• At last, pass it to the open() function to create a file

from datetime import datetime # get current date and time x = datetime.now() # create a file with date as a name day-month-year file_name = x.strftime('%d-%m-%Y.txt') with open(file_name, 'w') as fp: print('created', file_name) # with name as day-month-year-hours-minutes-seconds file_name_2 = x.strftime('%d-%m-%Y-%H-%M-%S.txt') with open(file_name_2, 'w') as fp: print('created', file_name_2) # at specified directory file_name_3 = r"E:\demos\files_demos\account\\" + x.strftime('%d-%m-%Y-%H-%M-%S.txt') with open(file_name_3, 'w') as fp: print('created', file_name_3)

created 29-06-2021.txt created 29-06-2021-14-57-24.txt created E:\demos\files_demos\account\\29-06-2021-14-57-24.txt

Create a file with Permission

Let’s see how to create a file with permissions other users can write.

• To create a file with appropriate permissions, use os.open() to create the file descriptor and set the permission.
• Next, open the descriptor using the built-in function open()

import os file_path = r'E:\pynative\account\sample.txt' # The default umask is 0o22 which turns off write permission of group and others os.umask(0) with open(os.open(file_path, os.O_CREAT | os.O_WRONLY, 0o777), 'w') as fh: fh.write('content') 

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About Vishal

I’m Vishal Hule, Founder of PYnative.com. I am a Python developer, and I love to write articles to help students, developers, and learners. Follow me on Twitter

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Creating and saving files in a new directory in Python

The following sections explain how to create and save a new file in Python using a new directory (folder) as the destination.

• Error when specifying a non-existent directory with open() ( FileNotFoundError )
• os.makedirs() Create a directory
• Example code to create a new file with a destination

The following is an example of a text file.

When storing images, it depends on the library whether you can specify a path that includes a non-existent directory (or whether it will automatically create one if it does not exist).
FileNotFoundError If this error occurs, you can create a new directory with os.madeirs() before executing the function to save, as in the following example.

Error when specifying a non-existent directory with open()(FileNotFoundError)

When creating a new file with the built-in function open(), an error occurs if a path containing a new directory (a directory that does not exist) is specified as the first argument as the destination. ( FileNotFoundError )

open('not_exist_dir/new_file.txt', 'w') # FileNotFoundError 

The first argument of open() can be an absolute path or a path relative to the current directory.

For the basic usage of open(), such as creating a new file in an existing directory, or overwriting or appending to an existing file, refer to the following article.

Create a directory(os.makedirs())

When creating a new file in a non-existent directory, it is necessary to create the directory before open().

If you are using Python 3.2 or later, it is convenient to use os.makedirs() with the argument exist_ok=True. Even if the target directory already exists, no error will occur and the directory can be created at once.

import os os.makedirs(new_dir_path, exist_ok=True) 

If you have an older version of Python and do not have the argument exist_ok in os.makedirs(), you will get an error if you specify the path to a directory that exists, so use os.path.exists() to check for the existence of the directory first.

if not os.path.exists(new_dir_path): os.makedirs(new_dir_path) 

See the following article for details.

Example code to create a new file with a destination

The following is a code example of a function that creates and saves a new file by specifying the destination directory.

The first argument dir_path is the path of the destination directory, the second argument filename is the name of the new file to be created, and the third argument file_content is the content to be written, each specified as a string.

If the specified directory does not exist, create a new one.

import os def save_file_at_dir(dir_path, filename, file_content, mode='w'): os.makedirs(dir_path, exist_ok=True) with open(os.path.join(dir_path, filename), mode) as f: f.write(file_content) 

save_file_at_dir('new_dir/sub_dir', 'new_file.txt', 'new text') 

In this case, the file new_file.txt with the content “new text” will be created in new_dir\sub_dir. In other words, the following file will be newly created. new_dir/sub_dir/new_file.txt

Concatenating directory and file names with os.path.join().

Also, the mode of open() is specified as an argument. For text files, the default ‘w’ is fine, but if you want to create a binary file, set mode=’wb’.

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