[FIXED] Directing print output to a .txt file

Issue

Is there a way to save all of the print output to a txt file in python? Lets say I have the these two lines in my code and I want to save the print output to a file named output.txt.

print ("Hello stackoverflow!")
print ("I have a question.")

I want the output.txt file to to contain

Hello stackoverflow!
I have a question.

Solution

Give print a file keyword argument, where the value of the argument is a file stream. The best practice is to open the file with the open function using a with block, which will ensure that the file gets closed for you at the end of the block:

with open("output.txt", "a") as f:
  print("Hello stackoverflow!", file=f)
  print("I have a question.", file=f)

From the Python documentation about print:

The file argument must be an object with a write(string) method; if it is not present or None, sys.stdout will be used.

And the documentation for open:

Open file and return a corresponding file object. If the file cannot be opened, an OSError is raised.

The "a" as the second argument of open means "append" - in other words, the existing contents of the file won't be overwritten. If you want the file to be overwritten instead at the beginning of the with block, use "w".

---

The with block is useful because, otherwise, you'd need to remember to close the file yourself like this:

f = open("output.txt", "a")
print("Hello stackoverflow!", file=f)
print("I have a question.", file=f)
f.close()

Answered By - Aaron Christiansen