Python and memory usage when opening files

Question

When opening and appending to a file in python, does that file get loaded into memory? I'm asking this because I'm writing a program where I write to several files in a round-robin fashion where I have the guarantee that any one file can fit into memory but not all files can fit into memory at the same time. Opening and closing files every time I append is not an option since that would be too slow. As such, I would need all the files opened simultaneously.

That depends on what exactly you do. Just open(...) won’t read anything into memory, no. — deceze
– deceze ♦, Commented Aug 7, 2020 at 6:50

milanbalazs · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-07 08:24:35Z

1

The answer is NO. Regarding the documentations of open() wraps a system call and returns a file object (Not the content of file): https://docs.python.org/2/library/functions.html#open

Open a file, returning an object of the file type described in section File Objects.

The file contents are not loaded into RAM unless you read the file with eg.: readlines(), read()

answered Aug 7, 2020 at 8:24

milanbalazs

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