There are hundreds, if not thousands, of file extensions out there. gif most likely conforms to the Graphics Interchange Format specification. For example, a file that has an extension of. What this data represents depends on the format specification used, which is typically represented by an extension. End of file (EOF): special character that indicates the end of the file.Data: contents of the file as written by the creator or editor.Header: metadata about the contents of the file (file name, size, type, and so on).In the end, these byte files are then translated into binary 1 and 0 for easier processing by the computer.įiles on most modern file systems are composed of three main parts: This data is organized in a specific format and can be anything as simple as a text file or as complicated as a program executable. Upon completion you will receive a score so you can track your learning progress over time:īefore we can go into how to work with files in Python, it’s important to understand what exactly a file is and how modern operating systems handle some of their aspects.Īt its core, a file is a contiguous set of bytes used to store data. Take the Quiz: Test your knowledge with our interactive “Reading and Writing Files in Python” quiz.

Python read and write file