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

Answer 2

You are iterating over each character of the file by calling for c in f.read().

Use for line in f and you will indeed iterate over each line.

Also prefer the use of with, this makes your code a lot more robust.

So this would be better:

with open('fileName') as f:
    for line in f:
        #process