Python: Opening a file with defined drive letter - TypeError: an integer is required

Question

Here is my two lines of code:

drive = 'j:'
f = open("%s\sample", "wb", drive)

I'm trying to write a simple program that is writing to a file that is being created by the program, the file is to be created on a defined drive, in this case, just onto "J:", however the following is displayed when running the code:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "D:\FYP\Program\usb.py", line 2, in <module>
f = open("%s\sample", "wb", drive)
TypeError: an integer is required

Am I missing something simple here?

Answer 1

drive = 'j:'
f = open("%s\sample" % drive, "wb")

Guess this is what you want.

Answer 2

You should use with to open your files as it will automatically close them and str.format may be less prone to simple errors:

drive = 'j:'
with open("{}/sample".format(drive), "wb", drive) as f:
     ..........

You should also use / or raw string r in your file paths as \\ is used to escape characters in python.

You can see how not doing so can have very different outcome:

In [38]: print "\new_dir"

ew_dir

In [39]: print "/new_dir"
/new_dir

In [40]: print r"\new_dir"
\new_dir