How to search and replace text in a file?

Question

How do I search and replace text in a file using Python 3?

Here is my code:

import os
import sys
import fileinput

print (\"Text to search for:\")
te         


        

Answer 1

I modified Jayram Singh's post slightly in order to replace every instance of a '!' character to a number which I wanted to increment with each instance. Thought it might be helpful to someone who wanted to modify a character that occurred more than once per line and wanted to iterate. Hope that helps someone. PS- I'm very new at coding so apologies if my post is inappropriate in any way, but this worked for me.

f1 = open('file1.txt', 'r')
f2 = open('file2.txt', 'w')
n = 1  

# if word=='!'replace w/ [n] & increment n; else append same word to     
# file2

for line in f1:
    for word in line:
        if word == '!':
            f2.write(word.replace('!', f'[{n}]'))
            n += 1
        else:
            f2.write(word)
f1.close()
f2.close()