Python: AttributeError: ‘_io.TextIOWrapper’ object has no attribute ‘split’

I have a textfile, let’s call it goodlines.txt and I want to load it and make a list that contains each line in the text file.

I tried using the split() procedure like this:

>>> f = open('goodlines.txt')
>>> mylist = f.splitlines()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: '_io.TextIOWrapper' object has no attribute 'splitlines'
>>> mylist = f.split()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: '_io.TextIOWrapper' object has no attribute 'split'

Why do I get these errors? Is that not how I use split()? ( I am using python 3.3.2)

Answers:

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Method 1

You are using str methods on an open file object.

You can read the file as a list of lines by simply calling list() on the file object:

with open('goodlines.txt') as f:
    mylist = list(f)

This does include the newline characters. You can strip those in a list comprehension:

with open('goodlines.txt') as f:
    mylist = [line.rstrip('n') for line in f]

Method 2

Try this:

 >>> f = open('goodlines.txt')
 >>> mylist = f.readlines()

open() function returns a file object. And for file object, there is no method like splitlines() or split(). You could use dir(f) to see all the methods of file object.

Method 3

You’re not reading the file content:

my_file_contents = f.read()

See the docs for further infos

You could, without calling read() or readlines() loop over your file object:

f = open('goodlines.txt')
for line in f:
    print(line)

If you want a list out of it (without n as you asked)

my_list = [line.rstrip('n') for line in f]

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