A substite for "for looping" in text files

Question

from unidecode import *
reader = open("a.txt",'w')
def unite():
    for line in reader:
        line = unidecode(line)
        print (line)
unite()

Now, I get an error saying for looping is not allowed in write mode. Is there any other way, I can modify each individual line like so, that it can be converted using unidecode?

Answer 1

You could hold it all in memory.

from unidecode import *

reader = open("a.txt",'w')
lines = reader.readlines()
def unite(lines):
    for line in lines:
        line = unidecode(line)
        print (line)
unite()

You could also use a temp file.

from unidecode import *
import os

reader = open('a.txt','r')
temp = open('~a.txt', 'w')
for line in reader():
    line = unidecode(line)
    temp.write(line)
reader.close()
temp.close()

os.remove('a.txt')
os.rename('~a.txt', 'a.txt')