how to skip first line in python using read() function?

Question

I just wanted to know if whether there is a way to skip the first line of a text file,by ONLY using read() to read the file and NOT readlines()

Answer 1

You'll need to iterate over the file somehow to decide when you've gotten to a line. But you can use readline instead of readlines to just read one line , not all lines, from the file. That's almost certainly what you want:

fd = open('file.txt')
first_line = fd.readline()    #
rest_of_file = fd.read()     # All but the first line

Notice it's not plural. readline instead of readline s

Answer 2

The readline is correct way of doing so, since your point is on achieving that without readline, you can do it with os.linesep :

import os

fpath = __file__

with open(fpath, 'r') as f:
  candidate = None
  while candidate != os.linesep:
    try:
        candidate = f.read(1)
        print("Read a character:", candidate)
    except Exception:
        break
  content_after_first_line = f.read()

print(content_after_first_line)

Answer 3

Here is the way:)

file = open('path/file.txt','r')
lines = file.readlines()[1:] #this will skip 1st line

Answer 4

If you are restricted to only use read() , you can do this in a loop, providing a size as an argument to read() . If you reach the newline-separator '\n' , you can exit the loop as you have reached the end of the first line.

with open('file.txt') as f:
    char = f.read(1)
    while char != '\n':
        char = f.read(1)

Answer 5

Call next() on the file handle:

with open('file.txt') as f_in:
    next(f_in)  # skip the first line
    print(f_in.read())