Writing to a new file if it doesn't exist, and appending to a file if it does

append, file, python, python-3.x

Solution

It's not clear to me exactly where the high-score that you're interested in is stored, but the code below should be what you need to check if the file exists and append to it if desired. I prefer this method to the "try/except".

import os
player = 'bob'

filename = player+'.txt'

if os.path.exists(filename):
    append_write = 'a' # append if already exists
else:
    append_write = 'w' # make a new file if not

highscore = open(filename,append_write)
highscore.write("Username: " + player + '\n')
highscore.close()

Problem

I have a program which writes a user's `highscore` to a text file. The file is named by the user when they choose a `playername`. If the file with that specific username already exists, then the program should append to the file (so that you can see more than one `highscore`). And if a file with that username doesn't exist (for example, if the user is new), it should create a new file and write to it. Here's the relevant, so far not working, code: ``` try: with open(player): #player is the varible storing the username input with open(player, 'a') as highscore: highscore.write("Username:", player) except IOError: with open(player + ".txt", 'w') as highscore: highscore.write("Username:", player) ``` The above code creates a new file if it doesn't exist, and writes to it. If it exists, nothing has been appended when I check the file, and I get no errors.

Original source

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