Wie kann man herausfinden, ob sich eine Datei in ihrem "Eof" befindet?


72
fp = open("a.txt")
#do many things with fp

c = fp.read()
if c is None:
    print 'fp is at the eof'

Besides the above method, any other way to find out whether is fp is already at the eof?


5
It's worth taking a look at the with statement for opening files - it handles closing and exceptions for you nicely, and reads well.
Gareth Latty

Antworten:


68

fp.read() reads up to the end of the file, so after it's successfully finished you know the file is at EOF; there's no need to check. If it cannot reach EOF it will raise an exception.

When reading a file in chunks rather than with read(), you know you've hit EOF when read returns less than the number of bytes you requested. In that case, the following read call will return the empty string (not None). The following loop reads a file in chunks; it will call read at most once too many.

assert n > 0
while True:
    chunk = fp.read(n)
    if chunk == '':
        break
    process(chunk)

Or, shorter:

for chunk in iter(lambda: fp.read(n), ''):
    process(chunk)

3
Yes, you're right. So there is no effective way to check whether eof is reached?
Alcott

1
@Alcott: there's aix's method for ordinary files. When reading in chunks, say with fp.read(n), you'll know you've hit EOF when that returns less than n characters.
Fred Foo

3
Unless you have some reason to process a file in chunks, it's generally more natural to process it line by line, which python provides as files are iterators - so you can just do for line in file: ... and let the for loop deal with it for you.
Gareth Latty

17
According to the BufferedIOBase doc: "For interactive raw streams (tty/terminal), a short result does not imply that EOF is imminent."
Quentin Pradet

4
@larsmans just used this, thanks! Though mine was for a binary stream, I should note here that if chunk == '': only works for literal string streams, if chunk == b'': is needed for binary streams, note the extra b.
matrixanomaly

53

The "for-else" design is often overlooked. See: Python Docs "Control Flow in Loop":

Example

with open('foobar.file', 'rb') as f:
    for line in f:
        foo()

    else:
        # No more lines to be read from file
        bar()

29
There is literally no point to this else:. Not writing it and just having bar() works the same. else only makes a difference if you use break.
Artyer

Someone might read this and care :) I did not know you could iterate over f line-by-line (even in binary mode!). I'm not a fan of else: there's no point to it, it just adds a line and more indented code. Its purpose and behavior is confusing just like finally in try/except.
Staplerfahrer

31

I'd argue that reading from the file is the most reliable way to establish whether it contains more data. It could be a pipe, or another process might be appending data to the file etc.

If you know that's not an issue, you could use something like:

f.tell() == os.fstat(f.fileno()).st_size

agreed if you call read() and you are at EOF its going to return ''
krystan honour

5
I prefer fh.seek(0, 2); file_size = fh.tell(); fh.seek(0) beforehand and then fh.tell() == file_size later on. Is there an advantage to doing it your way? NOTE: I would certainly suggest caching the size to a variable and not calling os.fstat on every loop.
Bruno Bronosky

2
Note that this won't work if the file is open in text mode: f.tell() gives you the file position in characters and os.fstat(f.fileno()).st_size gives you the file length in bytes. @BrunoBronosky's method will work, though.
rmalouf

14

As python returns empty string on EOF, and not "EOF" itself, you can just check the code for it, written here

f1 = open("sample.txt")

while True:
    line = f1.readline()
    print line
    if ("" == line):
        print "file finished"
        break;

5
An empty line in the file breaks this algorithm.
Leonardo Raele

4
@LeonardoRaele: an empty line would cause readline to return "\n". It only returns an empty string if the file is actually at EOF.
randomdude999

13

When doing binary I/O the following method is useful:

while f.read(1):
    f.seek(-1,1)
    # whatever

The advantage is that sometimes you are processing a binary stream and do not know in advance how much you will need to read.


How does this tell you if you are at EOF?
GreenAsJade

@GreenAsJade, f.read(1) will return the empty string at EOF.
user545424

Huh! And ... is the seek essential, and not just part of whatever? What's it's role?
GreenAsJade

When you use f.read(1) and the file is not at EOF, then you just read one byte, so the f.seek(-1,1) tells the file to move back one byte.
user545424

1
@Chris, as far as I know any non empty string will always evaluate to True. You can check this in the interpreter by running bool('\0').
user545424

9

You can compare the returned value of fp.tell() before and after calling the read method. If they return the same value, fp is at eof.

Furthermore, I don't think your example code actually works. The read method to my knowledge never returns None, but it does return an empty string on eof.


You can not use fp.tell(), for example, if it is in an iteration state: OSError: telling position disabled by next() call
Andry


6
f=open(file_name)
for line in f:
   print line

very pythonic and no additional tests
fcm

When using f = open(...) rather than with open(...) as f, you also should make sure to call f.close() when you're finished or there can be unintended side effects
Lovethenakedgun

6

I really don't understand why python still doesn't have such a function. I also don't agree to use the following

f.tell() == os.fstat(f.fileno()).st_size

The main reason is f.tell() doesn't likely to work for some special conditions.

The method works for me is like the following. If you have some pseudocode like the following

while not EOF(f):
     line = f.readline()
     " do something with line"

You can replace it with:

lines = iter(f.readlines())
while True:
     try:
        line = next(lines)
        " do something with line"
     except StopIteration:
        break

This method is simple and you don't need to change most of you code.


4

If file is opened in non-block mode, returning less bytes than expected does not mean it's at eof, I'd say @NPE's answer is the most reliable way:

f.tell() == os.fstat(f.fileno()).st_size


2

The Python read functions will return an empty string if they reach EOF


2
f = open(filename,'r')
f.seek(-1,2)     # go to the file end.
eof = f.tell()   # get the end of file location
f.seek(0,0)      # go back to file beginning

while(f.tell() != eof):
    <body>

You can use the file methods seek() and tell() to determine the position of the end of file. Once the position is found, seek back to the file beginning


Can you explain what your solution is doing by editing your post? Posting only code is often not enough.
Noel Widmer

2

Python doesn't have built-in eof detection function but that functionality is available in two ways: f.read(1) will return b'' if there are no more bytes to read. This works for text as well as binary files. The second way is to use f.tell() to see if current seek position is at the end. If you want EOF testing not to change the current file position then you need bit of extra code.

Below are both implementations.

Using tell() method

import os

def is_eof(f):
  cur = f.tell()    # save current position
  f.seek(0, os.SEEK_END)
  end = f.tell()    # find the size of file
  f.seek(cur, os.SEEK_SET)
  return cur == end

Using read() method

def is_eof(f):
  s = f.read(1)
  if s != b'':    # restore position
    f.seek(-1, os.SEEK_CUR)
  return s == b''

How to use this

while not is_eof(my_file):
    val = my_file.read(10)

Play with this code.



1

You can use tell() method after reaching EOF by calling readlines() method, like this:

fp=open('file_name','r')
lines=fp.readlines()
eof=fp.tell() # here we store the pointer
              # indicating the end of the file in eof
fp.seek(0) # we bring the cursor at the begining of the file
if eof != fp.tell(): # we check if the cursor
     do_something()  # reaches the end of the file

Can you format this post -- it seems to have a code snippet that is hard to read because its formatted all on one line.
Henry Crutcher

1

Get the EOF position of the file:

def get_eof_position(file_handle):
    original_position = file_handle.tell()
    eof_position = file_handle.seek(0, 2)
    file_handle.seek(original_position)
    return eof_position

and compare it with the current position: get_eof_position == file_handle.tell().


0

Although I would personally use a with statement to handle opening and closing a file, in the case where you have to read from stdin and need to track an EOF exception, do something like this:

Use a try-catch with EOFError as the exception:

try:
    input_lines = ''
    for line in sys.stdin.readlines():
        input_lines += line             
except EOFError as e:
    print e

0

Reading a file in batches of BATCH_SIZE lines (the last batch can be shorter):

BATCH_SIZE = 1000  # lines

with open('/path/to/a/file') as fin:
    eof = False
    while eof is False:
        # We use an iterator to check later if it was fully realized. This
        # is a way to know if we reached the EOF.
        # NOTE: file.tell() can't be used with iterators.
        batch_range = iter(range(BATCH_SIZE))
        acc = [line for (_, line) in zip(batch_range, fin)]

        # DO SOMETHING WITH "acc"

        # If we still have something to iterate, we have read the whole
        # file.
        if any(batch_range):
            eof = True

0

This code will work for python 3 and above

file=open("filename.txt")   
f=file.readlines()   #reads all lines from the file
EOF=-1   #represents end of file
temp=0
for k in range(len(f)-1,-1,-1):
    if temp==0:
        if f[k]=="\n":
            EOF=k
        else:
            temp+=1
print("Given file has",EOF,"lines")
file.close()

-1

I use this function:

# Returns True if End-Of-File is reached
def EOF(f):
    current_pos = f.tell()
    file_size = os.fstat(f.fileno()).st_size
    return current_pos >= file_size

I suppose you meant to test for equality in your last line.
Papa Smurf

-5

You can use below code snippet to read line by line, till end of file:

line = obj.readline()
while(line != ''):
    # Do Something
    line = obj.readline()
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