The mechanics of writing to text files are very straightforward. Suppose we need to store a list of coordinates to a text file,
coords = [[12, 31], [75, 19], [28, 51]]
writing them there could be done by code like this,
# write_coords.py
coords = [[12, 31], [75, 19], [28, 51]]
fname = raw_input('Name of file to create? ')
f = open(fname, 'w')
for coord in coords:
f.write(str(coord[0])+' '+str(coord[1])+'\n')
f.close()The pattern is similar to reading from a file:
w for
write. Note the wording of the prompt 'Name of
file to create? ' Opening a file for writing deletes an existing
file of the same name if one exists. In production code it is critical to
either know you can clobber existing files, or to check whether a file
name has already been used and then prompt the user for another name if
existing files shouldn't be clobbered.write
method. This method wants a string argument so we need to format our
coordinates accordingly (f.write(coord[0])) would throw an
error). Note that we also have to add the newline character
ourselves.The resulting file looks like this if you open it in a editor, e.g. IDLE,
12 31 75 19 28 51