python: search file for string

Question

I have tried to create a python function which takes in 2 parameters; a file name and a search string. In this case the file name is the script itself (script.py) and the searc

Answer 1

f.read() returns the entire contents of the file as a single string. You then iterate over those contents -- but iterating over a string yields only 1 character at a time so there is no way a character will contain the substring you are looking for.

def search_script_for_string(filename, searchString):
    with open(filename, 'r') as f:
        return searchString in f.read()

should do the trick. Alternatively, if you want to search line-by-line:

def search_script_for_string(filename, searchString):
    with open(filename, 'r') as f:
        for line in f:
            return searchString in line