Book Image

Scientific Computing with Python 3

By : Claus Führer, Jan Erik Solem, Olivier Verdier
Book Image

Scientific Computing with Python 3

By: Claus Führer, Jan Erik Solem, Olivier Verdier

Overview of this book

Python can be used for more than just general-purpose programming. It is a free, open source language and environment that has tremendous potential for use within the domain of scientific computing. This book presents Python in tight connection with mathematical applications and demonstrates how to use various concepts in Python for computing purposes, including examples with the latest version of Python 3. Python is an effective tool to use when coupling scientific computing and mathematics and this book will teach you how to use it for linear algebra, arrays, plotting, iterating, functions, polynomials, and much more.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Scientific Computing with Python 3
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Acknowledgement
Preface
References

File handling


File I/O (input and output) is essential in a number of scenarios. For example:

  • Working with measured or scanned data. Measurements are stored in files that need to be read to be analyzed.
  • Interacting with other programs. Save results to files so that they can be imported in other applications, and vice-versa.
  • Storing information for future reference or comparisons.
  • Sharing data and results with others, possibly on other platforms using other software.

In this section, we will cover how to handle file I/O in Python.

Interacting with files

In Python, an object of type file represents the contents of a physical file stored on disk. A new file object may be created using the following syntax:

myfile = open('measurement.dat','r') # creating a new file object from an existing file

The contents of the file may be accessed, for instance, with this:

print(myfile.read())

Usage of file objects requires some care. The problem is that a file has to be closed before it can be reread or used by other...