Syntax error in reading text file [duplicate]

Question

I'm having trouble in getting the following code to run, (it's exercise 15 from Zed Shaw's "Learn Python the hard way"):

from sys import argv

script, filename = argv

txt = open(filename)

print "Here's your file %r." % filename print txt.read()

print "Type the filename again: " file_again = raw_input("==>")

txt_again = open(file_again)

print txt_again.read()

txt.close() txt_again.close()

I try to run it from the terminal and get the following:

dominics-macbook-4:MyPython Dom$ python ex15_sample.txt
  File "ex15_sample.txt", line 1
    This is stuff I typed into a file.
                  ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

Here's the contents of ex15_sample.txt:

"This is stuff I typed into a file.
It is really cool stuff.
Lots and lots of fun to have in here."

I'm banging my head off the wall! (Python 2.6.1, OS X 10.6.8)

Edited question a bit, but you seem to be missing some newlines in the code snippet... I didn't start guessing where they should be, please edit yourself to fix... — hyde
– hyde, Commented Nov 17, 2013 at 18:34
Thanks for the edit, @hyde. I'm not sure where the newlines would be - I cut and pasted the code from the tutorial and they seem identical to me. — DTB
– DTB, Commented Nov 17, 2013 at 20:56
This helped me lol, I was doing the same thing and stuck on the same part. (to clear it up for anybody else, need to run the proper script, with ex15_sample.txt as a parameter, but we were running it incorrectly. — Randy Martin
– Randy Martin, Commented May 16, 2019 at 19:18

DSM · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-17 18:32:15Z

8

python ex15_sample.txt

Why are you telling Python to run a text file? Don't you mean something more like

python ex15_sample.py ex15_sample.txt

or whatever you've called your Python program?

answered Nov 17, 2013 at 18:32

DSM

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