How To Read a File Line by Line Into a List in Python

Most of the time, we process data from a file so that we can manipulate it from memory. This data can be numeric, string, or a combination of both. In this article, I will discuss how to open a file for reading with the built-in function open() and the use of Pandas library to manipulate data in the file. This also includes reading the contents of a file line by line and saving the same to a list.

Things To Learn in This Article

1. Open the file for reading
2. Read the contents of a file line by line
3. Store the read lines into a list data type
   • For loop
   • List comprehension
   • Readlines
   • Readline
4. Read file using pandas

1. Open the File for Reading

Python's built-in function open() can be used to open a file for reading and writing. It is defined below based on the Python documentation.