reading files in python

[ananthakrishna]

I wrote a script for finding the characters and the file size
The value returned by os.path.getsize () is bytes only
When I tried to read the charecters it is giving less than the value given by the function.

import os
File=open("C:\\df.txt",'r')
File.seek(0)
size=os.path.getsize("C:\\df.txt")
print "size-----"+str(size)
count=0
for c in File.read():
        count=count+1
print "characters------"+str(count)

output:

size-----679
charecters------662


why is this difference b/w the charecters and the size

[YarrOfDoom]

I've done a little testing and it appears the difference between the size and the number of characters counted is equal to the number of newlines in a file. So I'm guessing this is related the fact that Windows uses 2 characters to indicate the end of a line.

[bvdet]

View a text file in Notepad++ and show all characters (Windows). Each newline character ("\n") is actually 2 characters (CR and LF). That is the difference.

Note: ninja'd by YarOfDoom!