Copying from one text file to another using Python

Solution 1:

The oneliner:

open("out1.txt", "w").writelines([l for l in open("in.txt").readlines() if "tests/file/myword" in l])

Recommended with with:

with open("in.txt") as f:
    lines = f.readlines()
    lines = [l for l in lines if "ROW" in l]
    with open("out.txt", "w") as f1:
        f1.writelines(lines)

Using less memory:

with open("in.txt") as f:
    with open("out.txt", "w") as f1:
        for line in f:
            if "ROW" in line:
                f1.write(line) 

Solution 2:

readlines() reads the entire input file into a list and is not a good performer. Just iterate through the lines in the file. I used 'with' on output.txt so that it is automatically closed when done. That's not needed on 'list1.txt' because it will be closed when the for loop ends.

#!/usr/bin/env python
with open('output.txt', 'a') as f1:
    for line in open('list1.txt'):
        if 'tests/file/myword' in line:
            f1.write(line)

Solution 3:

Just a slightly cleaned up way of doing this. This is no more or less performant than ATOzTOA's answer, but there's no reason to do two separate with statements.

with open(path_1, 'a') as file_1, open(path_2, 'r') as file_2:
    for line in file_2:
        if 'tests/file/myword' in line:
            file_1.write(line)

Solution 4:

Safe and memory-saving:

with open("out1.txt", "w") as fw, open("in.txt","r") as fr: 
    fw.writelines(l for l in fr if "tests/file/myword" in l)

It doesn't create temporary lists (what readline and [] would do, which is a non-starter if the file is huge), all is done with generator comprehensions, and using with blocks ensure that the files are closed on exit.