Writing a list to a file with Python

Question

Is this the cleanest way to write a list to a file, since writelines() doesn\'t insert newline characters?

file.writelines([\"%s\\n\" % item  fo         


        

Answer 1

Using Python 3 and Python 2.6+ syntax:

with open(filepath, 'w') as file_handler:
    for item in the_list:
        file_handler.write("{}\n".format(item))

This is platform-independent. It also terminates the final line with a newline character, which is a UNIX best practice.

Starting with Python 3.6, "{}\n".format(item) can be replaced with an f-string: f"{item}\n".