pythonlistfilereadlines

Is there a difference between : "file.readlines()", "list(file)" and "file.read().splitlines(True)"?

What is the difference between :

with open("file.txt", "r") as f:
    data = list(f)

Or :

with open("file.txt", "r") as f:
    data = f.read().splitlines(True)

Or : 

with open("file.txt", "r") as f:
    data = f.readlines()

They seem to produce the exact same output. Is one better (or more pythonic) than the other ?

Solution

  • Explicit is better than implicit, so I prefer:

    with open("file.txt", "r") as f:
    data = f.readlines()

    But, when it is possible, the most pythonic is to use the file iterator directly, without loading all the content to memory, e.g.:

    with open("file.txt", "r") as f:
    for line in f:
       my_function(line)