Reading a File Byte by Byte in Python

In Python, you can open and read a file in chunks by specifying the number of bytes you want to read at a time using the read method.

filename.read(n)

Here, the argument n inside the parentheses represents the number of bytes to read.

When you specify the number of bytes, the read method will read N bytes at a time, without pausing at the end of each record.

A Practical Example

Let's consider a file named prova.txt that contains three records:

123
45678
9

The first record has three characters, the second has five, and the third has one.

First, open the file in read mode:

f = open('prova.txt', 'r')

Now, read the file's content in chunks of four bytes each:

>>> f.read(4)
'123\n'
>>> f.read(4)
'4567'
>>> f.read(4)
'8\n9\n'

The read method reads the file's content in groups of four bytes.

Note: The file content includes the \n symbol, which is the newline character. In this context, the \n symbol doesn't separate the file's records but is treated as a regular ASCII character.