read the last line of a file in python

Question

I have a two requirements .

First Requirement-I want to read the last line of a file and assign the last value to a variable in python.

Answer 1

On systems that have a tail command, you could use tail, which for large files would relieve you of the necessity of reading the entire file.

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
f = 'yourfilename.txt'
# Get the last line from the file
p = Popen(['tail','-1',f],shell=False, stderr=PIPE, stdout=PIPE)
res,err = p.communicate()
if err:
    print (err.decode())
else:
    # Use split to get the part of the line that you require
    res = res.decode().split('location="')[1].strip().split('"')[0]
    print (res)

Note: the decode() command is only required for python3

res = res.split('location="')[1].strip().split('"')[0]

would work for python2.x