Decoding a text file in python

Question

What would the syntax look like when decoding a file,when I try to open the file it shows this #<_io.TextIOWrapper name='DOB.txt' mode='r+' encoding='cp1252'>

Answer 1

Your resulting printout is actually your opened file (it's an object).

I suppose you're opening the file like this:

f = open("DOB.txt", "r+", encoding="cp1252")

Directly printing f will result in your current printed string.

To actually retrieve the contents of your file, you need to call the read method.

Example:

f = open("DOB.txt", "r+", encoding="cp1252")
content = f.read()

content will become the contents of your file as a single string whereas newlines are being encoded by a newline character (depending on your OS either \r\n (on Windows) or \n on a UNIX-based OS)