After the body has been completed, the file is automatically closed, so it can't be read without opening it again. You can make a tax-deductible donation here. If no options are specified, fstat reports on all open files in the system. This is basically why modes exist. This command will first update pip to the latest version, and then it will list all . You could check a file, decide that it is not in use, then just before you open it another process (or thread) leaps in and grabs it (or even deletes it). How to update all Python packages On Linux/macOS. To learn more about them, please read this article in the documentation. To modify (write to) a file, you need to use the write() method. Once the full code is compiled and executed, it will close the open file if it was opened. . 542), How Intuit democratizes AI development across teams through reusability, We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. So it will return True. Does With(NoLock) help with query performance? On Windows, you can also directly retrieve the information by leveraging on the NTDLL/KERNEL32 Windows API. Python How to Check if File can be Read or Written Collection of Checks for Readable and Writable Files. Will your python script desire to open the file for writing or for reading? I'd therefore like to only open the file when I know it is not been written to by an other application. Would you check the link of lsof? For example, if you only need to read the content of a file, it can be dangerous to allow your program to modify it unexpectedly, which could potentially introduce bugs. To see if anything has changed in the directory, all you need to do is compare the output of this function over a given interval just as we did in the first two examples. Pythons dependency on external files is a crucial aspect, and you need to pay heed to the base/source files, before executing any codes. That solves the problems brought up in the comments to his answer. When you're working with files, errors can occur. On Mar 7, 6:28 am, "Ros"